Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for HUD's Office on Sustainable Communities.

Streetsblog met with Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for Sustainable Communities at HUD, to talk about these questions. Brian Sullivan from the Office of Public Affairs also joined us for the conversation.

Streetsblog: When you look at the new Congress coming in – how is that going to affect your work, and how does it affect your message?

Zimmerman: We are hopeful that a lot of the success stories in communities across the country – it’s being locally driven and it’s not a partisan issue. We have Republican and Democratic mayors and governors – it’s nonpartisan, or bipartisan. The partisanship does tend to come in from Congress. If you look at the map of where we made grant selections, they’re Democratic and Republican, small towns and big towns. So we’re hopeful that the demand, interest, and excitement around these programs will be conveyed to Congress no matter where they sit – what party, what state, what zip code they’re in.

People just think this is the right thing to do, and it’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting them instead of being in the way.

It’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting [livable communities] instead of being in the way.

In terms of messaging, we have always felt there is a strong economic need for investing more smartly, leveraging our resources. Federal coordination is just cost effectiveness.

That message is one we can be stronger on. We’ve talked about some of the environmental and quality-of-life reasons for sustainability – we can do a better job of explaining what are the costs of not investing this way and what are the savings if we do. It’s really about trying to invest more wisely. As Rob Puentes at Brookings likes to say, ‘We’re out of money, now’s the time to think!’

SB: Tom Latham is likely to be the new head of the House Transportation and HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, and he’s an Iowa boy. He’s from a small town. He doesn’t really get livability. How do you deal with someone like that holding the purse strings?

MZ: We’re happy to talk with them about the number of small communities that came forward for our regional planning grants. Each of them was saying, ‘we have been wanting to do this for so long but there are not resources for small communities to do long range integrated planning, because those resources go to the state. We can’t control, we can’t plan what we want to do.’ They’re saying, ‘we’re losing a lot of jobs; we have aging infrastructure, aging population. How are we going to grow and prosper?’

We also had a lot of fast-growing rural communities and they want to know how they can get control of their growth, how they can build their economies to have a stronger connection to urban areas where the market may be. They’re having hard issues of affordable housing and growth pressures. We hope those communities will make the case.

SB: You gave out planning grants, what if there’s no money for implementation? Especially if a Republican Congress tightens the purse strings?

The moment a community starts to whisper about doing a new transit line, developers are speculating and buying up land – and it’s becoming harder to preserve and create affordable housing.

Sullivan: You can use block grant funding – the normal stable of programs here at HUD – to actually implement these plans. In larger entitlement communities, they get direct block grant funding from us that they can use to implement these. They don’t have to go to the state for that. They can do it themselves.

If you’re a rural community, and you don’t get direct block grant funding from HUD, you do have to go to the state, sell that idea to the state, say ‘we’ve got this regional plan to keep us going for the next 50 years. We need some of that state CDBG money.’

SB: There’s no new money.

MZ: There’s no new money. We already have a lot of money our three agencies are giving each year. How do we make those investments work to implement these grants? There is a lot at our disposal and we want to make sure that if people are coming forward with these great plans and this great vision, that we’re not being the stumbling block. I’m not going to say new money and more money wouldn’t be great, but first and foremost let’s make sure the existing funds we have are supporting this.

SB: Are lenders open to sustainability practices? Are you bringing the whole development community along with you?

MZ: The development community, all on its own, has been going through a pretty major transformation. The moment a community starts to whisper about doing a new transit line, developers are speculating and buying up land – and it’s becoming harder to preserve and create affordable housing. So the demand is there, we don’t have enough supply for it.

It may not be the entire development community, but we’ve had sensational interest by the development community for new housing, or traditional housing, if we think back to how our cities used to be. They have a lot of ideas as well, in terms of barriers in the tax codes or our loan programs that are only to support one element of the market, and they want to level the playing field for a developer who wants to do different kinds of development.

SB: You mentioned affordability. Transit-oriented development, livability does raise property values. That’s a double-edged sword. HUD’s mission is about affordable housing. How do you square that with encouraging livability?

MZ: For many years, transit was seen as the transportation for those who could afford nothing else. One of the reasons there’s a larger transit constituency now than there was 20 years ago is a result of the benefits for those who choose to use transit. And one of them is an increase in property values, which can translate to an increase in equity if you’re a homeowner. That is a benefit that transit and TOD can provide.

We need to be more purposeful in ensuring those benefits accrue to those who lived there before the transit investment and people who need low-cost transportation options. We haven’t seen that the marketplace itself is going to make sure that equitable distribution happens. What strategies can we put in place to ensure the preservation and the creation of long-term affordable housing? In many of our communities, it’s illegal to do multi-family housing, or do mixed use development, or have lower parking standards, so we’re not able to grow the supply, which is creating more and more pressure.

BS: And if CDBG and HOME funds are used in the implementation of these plans, there’s an absolute requirement to maintain affordability.

MZ: Fair housing can be about concentrations of poverty, racial segregation, or other impediments – people who have mobility impairments, are they able to access housing options across the region? In our challenge grants, we have over a dozen of those that want to set up either land banking or land acquisition funds or other strategies to think about long-term, permanent affordable housing strategies within new or existing transit corridors. They can use our funds to help set those up.

BS: Sustainable homeownership is something we’re learning about right now in the biggest way since the Great Depression. This correction that’s taking place is leading to a re-balancing of housing across all kinds of regions. Maybe we were too homeownership-happy.

SB: Is that where HUD is going?

BS: I wouldn’t say that. Who doesn’t support homeownership? But there’s much more emphasis on the sustainable part of homeownership. It doesn’t do anybody any good to get into a home they can’t sustain.

Check back tomorrow for more from Streetsblog’s conversation with Mariia Zimmerman and Brian Sullivan. We ask them about the unexpected challenges of cross-agency collaboration, the selection process for grantees. and a little-known program that could help stretch housing money — or expose affordable housing to foreclosure.

Insert new question here.

We've noted throughout this election season that transportation policy is something of a third rail in presidential politics. Gas prices and auto industry jobs are irresistible fodder for campaign promises, but even the candidate who has decent ideas about rail travel and bike infrastructure doesn't mention transit on the stump. (The other one doesn't have much to say in the first place.)

If you want topics like intercity rail and federal support for transit projects to get more attention on the national stage, the place to go is the Transportation for America website. T4A is currently collecting signatures calling on Obama and -- suspend your disbelief -- McCain to address the future of the U.S. transportation system at the final presidential debate Wednesday night. Sign on by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow and your petition will be delivered to campaign representatives before the debate.

Wondering how to make the case for transit to a national audience? T4A policy director Mariia Zimmerman puts it in compelling dollars-and-cents terms in this piece, "Reinventing American Transportation," which accompanies the Blueprint for America series on PBS. (Excerpt after the jump.)

Today, transportation is the second highest household expense after housing. America has invested in a stunning national highway system, but lags far behind other nations in building transit and high speed rail corridors that could complete our national transportation system.

For some families, long commutes and a lack of affordable or convenient transit mean that they are actually spending more on transportation than housing, particularly in exurban areas where people have relied upon the "drive until you qualify" approach to homeownership. And yet for those who do have transit available, they are saving almost $9,500 per year. Public transportation already saves the U.S. 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline each year.

Providing the transit, walking and biking infrastructure so that more people in our growing nation can live in closer proximity to daily needs and use their cars less could save billions more gallons of oil. It can also restore value to many of our urban neighborhoods: In most regions, homes near jobs and/or transit stations are holding their value, while those with the longest commutes are seeing steep declines and little buyer interest.

America has a long history of visionary transportation investment that has left a sizable imprint on our landscape and world standing. Our canals, railroads, bridges, and highways have shaped settlement patterns and served as the backbone of our economy. While these investments shaped the past, it is time now to ask what kind of investments America needs today when gasoline prices are high, oil dependence is a national threat, climate change is threatening the globe, and families are looking for more affordable and reliable options.

The next president and Congress should endorse a bold program to build modern, world-class train and bus systems in our cities and towns, high-speed rail that connects urban and rural areas, complete streets safe for biking and walking, and to get our highways, bridges and existing transit in tip-top shape.

Photo: ddkim/Flickr

On Wednesday, Mobilizing the Region called attention to the Bush Administration's proposed 2009 transportation budget. While New York City stands to get welcome earmarks for projects like the Second Avenue Subway, the big picture is more sobering. The administration wants to transfer billions of dollars from transit to highways:

It proposes to shore up the Highway Account of the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) by “borrowing” $3.2 billion from the HTF’s Mass Transit Account. It would also cut national transit spending by more than $200 million from previously proposed levels.

What's going on here? I'll do my best to make it interesting.

The Highway Trust Fund has two components: By law, 18.2 percent is set aside for transit, and the rest for
highways. Problem is, the highway people have been spending down their part of the fund at an unsustainable clip, and they are on pace to run out of cash around October. If that happens, they will have to stop jobs -- cutting off exactly the kind of big-ticket construction projects that legislators love.

"That's going to be very unsavory from a political standpoint," says David Burwell, a DC-based transportation policy expert. "So they're robbing Peter to pay Paul."

The administration looks at the Transit Fund, which still has several billion left in the piggy bank, and sees a quick fix to postpone facing a long-term problem head-on. But raiding the Transit Fund would drop it, too, into the red within two years. In a letter of opposition, Maria Zimmerman of the national transit advocacy group Reconnecting America warns of this scenario:

Bush’s FY09 budget proposal would further push the cost and obligation of maintaining the multi-trillion dollar transportation system -- one of this nation’s greatest assets -- onto the backs of state and local governments.

Now the good news: The gambit is unlikely to succeed.

"The people on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are going to scream bloody murder," says Burwell. "It's a violation of the spending structure established by ISTEA."

The most logical way to make up the shortfall, he believes, is to bump up the gas tax, but of course that's politically unpopular too. A more likely scenario will be a stop-gap measure like taking money from the general fund (which bumps up the federal deficit) or cracking down on gasoline wholesalers who cheat on gas tax payments (apparently this is a widely known problem that has gone largely unaddressed for some time).

In the not-too-distant future, more drastic measures will be necessary. The attempt to raid the Transit Fund is symptomatic of the same unsustainable financial situation that has caused the idea of privatizing highways to gain so much traction.

Burwell, an early champion of "context-sensitive" approaches to transportation projects, thinks privatization skirts the issue. "The solution is to figure out how to re-finance the Trust Fund and do it in a way that addresses public goals like reducing VMT and emissions."

The current authorization for the Highway Trust Fund expires on September 30, 2009, nine months after the new president takes office. The next authorization law will likely involve a commitment in the range of $300 to $350 billion over the next five years. Wouldn't it be great to hear the candidates weigh in on how that money should be spent?

Photo: Kaptain Krispy Kreme/Flickr