Why the government now cares what you spend on gas

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-the-government-now-cares-what-you-spend-on-gas/

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The housing crisis was, of course, primarily about housing: housing that people couldn’t afford, housing that banks helped them finance anyway, housing that too many treated as a sure-fire investment.

But in a less noticed way, the housing crisis was also very much about transportation. The money we spend getting around is largely dictated by the choices we make in where to live. Buy a house 20 miles down the highway from your job, and your costs of getting around on $4-a-gallon gas are much steeper than they would be if you lived a short walk from the office (or the bus stop).

Those costs — half a tank of gas here, a bus ticket there — are much harder to track than a single monthly housing payment. They’re practically invisible. That $2,000 a month mortgage on a spacious suburban colonial? It may also cost you $100 a week in gas money. Which is just the kind of unanticipated financial burden that can break a family budget.

So how do you make the intertwined costs and tradeoffs of housing and transportation more obvious? The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago has been trying to do this for several years with its Housing + Transportation Affordability Index. And, as we’ve previously mentioned, the federal government has been paying attention.

[gopiscrap]

1. good they've needed to do this for awhile

[FarCenter]

2. They need to work on making it less expensive to sell one home and buy a new one.

At present, it probably costs about $30,000 to move from one $300,000 house to another closer to a job.