What one has been reading about Affordable and Accessible Housing for the last five years at Bacons Rebellion is confirmed by WaPo.
Some clarifications:
1. Aggregating data by municipal jurisdiction is deceiving. “Upper Montgomery County” (Radius = 25 Miles) is more comparable to Eastern Loudoun County (Radius = 25 Miles) than it is to “Lower Montgomery County” (Radius = 5).
2. Municipal borders to not identify organic components of human settlement pattern – Fairfax County contains all or most of 9 Beta Communities.
3. “Average” prices are poor measures of real conditions with widely varying parameters over large areas – Fairfax County is 244,000 acres.
4. WaPo uses the word “core” but the WaPo “core” is 13 times smaller in area than the Core of the National Capital SubRegion (area inside the Clear Edge) as defined by Regional Metrics.
With these reservations, see the map in WaPo’s 2 May 2009 Real Estate section on home values.
Appraisals for refinancing (not foreclosures) of even well located dwellings in the Radius = 40 to Radius = 50 Miles Radius Band suggest values are down 50 percent from late 2006.
That brings them to about where historic trends would put shelter values but for the Agency fueled housing bubble and HyperIndividualism – the erosion of the balance between private rights and community responsibilities.
There must be Balance of J / H / S / R / A at the Community scale if there is to be Affordable and Accessible Housing to support a economic, social and physical sustainability.
Trickle Down and ‘drive-til-you-qualify’ was never an intelligent choice for providing shelter but now that humans (led by the US of A’s citizens) have burned through much of the Natural Capital accumulated over the last 2 Billion years it is time for Fundamental Transformation or Collapse.
EMR