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Census: Home is where work is
Weary of longer commutes, more Americans are doing something about it. They are choosing where to live based on how close they are to the job.
The Census Bureau (news – web sites)’s 2001 American Housing Survey asked people who moved during the previous year why they picked their new neighborhood. The reason cited most often: convenience to the job. About 31% said it was a factor, up from 24% a decade earlier.
Haya El Nasser USA TODAY
Proximity to work was a bigger factor than type of house that they lived in, the survey found.
”It’s another indicator that people are getting more and more tired of the effects of traffic on their commutes and their lives,” says demographer Alan Pisarski, author of Commuting in America. ”We’ve reached a level of very high frustration.”
From 1980 to 1990, average travel time to work increased only 40 seconds to 22.4 minutes, according to the Census Bureau. But from 1990 to 2000, it jumped three minutes to 25.5.
The agency recently released results of the survey of 62,000 households, an accurate sample of the nation’s 119 million households.
The survey also found that people who moved paid more attention than they did a decade ago to how close they were to friends and relatives. Though the quality of schools remained important to respondents, the type of house they moved into was less important when picking a new neighborhood.
”The thing we have the least amount of is time,” says Dowell Myers, professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California. ”Consumers are shifting their priorities.”
The shift is consistent with the nation’s changing demographics, Myers says. As baby boomers age, being close to work, friends and relatives takes precedence. As their children grow up, the importance of schools wanes.
Myers says the data demonstrate the need for more building in developed areas than on farmland at the edge of metropolitan areas.
But the National Association of Home Builders says getting to work is a low priority for its customers. People still want big, single-family homes at a good price wherever they can get them, according to a survey that the group took this year of 2,000 home buyers.
”Price, size of the house and lot, and low taxes were the top three things that they were looking for,” says Clayton Trailor, a vice president of the home builders organization.
Some people are combining their desire for a big house and proximity to work. They’re buying small homes in old neighborhoods, tearing them down and building larger houses. The trend is most popular in suburbs near mass transit and other services.
Trailor says being closer to work doesn’t necessarily require living closer to cities because most jobs are in the suburbs.
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