A church near numerous transit options in the Clarendon area of Arlington with affordable housing being constructed on top.
Is service quality at risk in Arlington, Virginia – including those related to health, education, and public safety – because of housing affordability? A recent survey (PDF) offers up some food for thought.
Last spring, nearly 700 employees of Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington voluntarily answered a computer-driven survey – about 40 percent of respondents were from the ranks of nursing and nursing support. About half of the participants were aged 45 and older and about half had worked at VHC five or more years.
- More than half spend more than 30 minutes commuting to work – with more spending over an hour than those spending 15 minutes or less. Eighty-seven percent drive alone – but at least some of this is probably explained by late night or odd work shifts.
- More troubling, two-thirds spend at least 30 percent for housing costs (the threshold of “affordability” is 30 percent of gross income for rent or mortgage plus utilities), with about half of that number spending 50 percent or more. Not surprisingly, more than half said they’d like to live closer to work and the main reason they don’t is affordability.
- About a third said they would have considered changing jobs to be closer to where they live, with another 11 percent saying they were unsure about that action.
This survey was neither scientific nor necessarily representative. We don’t know, for example, who left VHC in the last decade and why. But given the age and length of service of many of the respondents, could it suggest a looming challenge in recruiting the next generation of employees and/or retaining them beyond the five-year mark?
My organization – The Alliance for Housing Solutions – is grateful to VHC for sharing its results, which were completed in partnership with George Mason University. But we need to hear about housing impacts in other vital sectors and we need to be more intentional in gathering such data. AHS urges Arlington County to take full advantage of this data for its Affordable Housing Study that is currently underway.
Photo by BeyondDC