TOM RATZLOFF David Whiteley, the manager at Moona Lisa Gourmet Ice Cream & Coffee, said he has been unable to find affordable housing on Daniel Island. His daily commute via cab from West Ashley costs him between $60 to $80.

Twelve years after its debut, Daniel Island’s traditional neighborhood development has become an award-winning, bustling, family-friendly community.

But for many low- and middle-income people who work here, the availability of affordable housing is slim and the cost to commute expensive.

Consider David Whiteley, for example. He has been manager at Daniel Island’s Moo-na Lisa Gourmet Ice Cream & Coffee for two months. His assignment here is temporary because he will eventually transfer to Moo-na Lisa’s new North Charleston location. But because he does not own a private vehicle, he must commute to Daniel Island via taxi from his West Ashley home six days a week. One-way fare costs a whopping $30-$40.

A veteran guitarist, songwriter and lead singer, Whitely recently returned to the Lowcountry after spending two years touring the U.S. with the Charleston alt-rock band "Shotgun Bride." The band recorded a CD and played high-profile venues that included the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night With Conan O’Brien."

When Shotgun Bride disbanded a few months ago, the 28-year-old musician decided to fall back on his prior experience as a coffee shop manager and barista. But finding affordable housing on Daniel Island has proved fruitless, he said. While his income is too high to qualify for low-income housing, other local rental opportunities are cost-prohibitive.

"There are no other alternatives," Whiteley said. "You’re looking at $1,500 to $2,000 a month rent for most places. One place had a fully furnished FROG for $800 a month. But I’m an ex-rock musician just moving back to town and I don’t have a lot of savings bolstered up right now."

When Daniel Island was born a dozen years ago, it was billed as a cozy, pedestrian-friendly traditional neighborhood development where residents could live, work and play in one self-contained town.

But as real estate values skyrocketed, particularly after 2000, many potential middle-class homeowners learned that Daniel Island was too expensive for their blood. Consequently, affordable workforce housing has remained a rare commodity here.

The term "workforce housing" surfaced in the late 1990s as housing became more expensive relative to people’s incomes. While top wage earners enjoyed salary increases, the bottom 60 percent of U.S. workers’ incomes hardly kept up with inflation. Meanwhile, home prices doubled.

Theoretically, such economic disparity runs counter to the New Urbanist philosophy that helped shape Daniel Island’s development. In fact, it is specifically addressed in the bylaws of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Coincidentally, this document was ratified at a Charleston conference in 1996.

But the stark reality in 2008 is that the cost of Daniel Island housing, where the median income well exceeds $100,000 annually, remains out of reach for many people.

Daniel Island is not an anomaly in this regard. Despite New Urbanism’s professed commitment to affordable housing, a consistent lack of economic and cultural integration and vitality has been the movement’s Achilles heel.

Arizona State University professor Emily Talen is author of 2008’s Design for Diversity, Exploring Socially Mixed Neighborhoods. She notes that a recent survey of 152 New Urbanist developments across the U.S. revealed that 90 percent of them are not affordable to someone earning the average teacher’s salary.

Is this a bad thing?

Yes, according to Talen, who argues that a poorly planned community that ignores social integration risks becoming a "sterile monoculture" that is devoid of cultural vibrancy and diversity. Without those characteristics, a traditional neighborhood development risks becoming just another insular yuppie enclave, she said.

Recognizing these deficiencies, plus facing a mandate from the city of Charleston, the past four years have seen construction of the Seven Farms Apartments for low-income families as well as affordable housing buyers’ incentives in other neighborhoods near the Daniel Island School.

When the Humanities Foundation’s Seven Farms Apartments opened in December 2006, "workforce housing" was the buzzword on Main Street. Local business leaders canvassed local firms’ employees and urged them to apply to live at the brand-new apartments if they met the low-income guidelines.

Steven Kellett has been property manager at Seven Farms Apartments since it opened. He said that at least 13 residents at the 72-unit facility have found employment on Daniel Island. Local businesses that have hired Seven Farms residents include local restaurants, schools, retail shops and healthcare providers. Other Seven Farms Apartments residents have found jobs in nearby communities, particularly in Mount Pleasant, he said. The apartment complex is also home to 19 retirees and pensioners.

The Humanities Foundation received the South Carolina Housing Achievement Award in January for its Seven Farms Drive project. The award, which was presented by the South Carolina State Housing Finance and Development Authority, lauded the foundation’s collaboration with the city of Charleston and the Daniel Island Company to introduce affordable housing on Daniel Island.

Nevertheless, it appears that true workforce housing remains elusive on Daniel Island. Kellett said that the Seven Farms complex currently has a six-month to one-year waiting list for prospective residents. In addition, mid-level professionals such as first-responders and teachers remain mired in an economic chasm. They earn too much to qualify for Seven Farms Apartments’ low-income requirements, but find that the remaining residential housing stock is too expensive.

A shortage of affordable housing contributes to a variety of regional problems, according to a 2007 joint study by the Charleston Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Lowcountry Housing Trust. Urban sprawl and roadway congestion have been exacerbated as workers commute from more-affordable outlying communities to jobs in the Charleston area.

The study cited a U.S. Census survey that identified 77,000 area homes occupied by people who cannot comfortably afford their mortgage or rent payments. (The federal government’s definition of an unaffordable burden is if homeowners spend more than 28 percent of their income on mortgage, insurance and property tax payments. Renting is considered affordable if rent does not exceed 30 percent of income.) Consequently, more people run the risk of foreclosure or eviction, particularly in today’s ailing economy.

There are major social costs, too.

"The lack of affordable housing impacts the entire community," the study concluded. "There is an indirect loss of the connection that can not be measured through the inability of workers to connect with the community in which they work, leading to the loss of volunteer time and lack of understanding or caring about the community."

Economic vitality suffers, too, according to the study. Filling job vacancies also becomes tougher and employers incur additional training costs when they have higher turnover rates.

This summer the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments launched a regional planning initiative to develop a regional land use/infrastructure plan for the tri-county. This plan includes a comprehensive housing plan that focuses on housing supply, affordability and quality to accommodate all income levels.

The need for workforce housing is being recognized in Mount Pleasant, too, where the average home costs roughly $320,000. Last month, the city’s planning commission endorsed a workforce housing ordinance that relaxed density restrictions on developers who build below-market homes.

Studies project that Berkeley County will absorb an additional 60,000 new residents by 2030 and the county is revamping its comprehensive plan to address these coming needs. Housing affordability is an important part of that equation. Consequently, Berkeley County planning staff members are conducting 10 area information-gathering meetings to solicit citizen input.

Last week’s meeting at Keith School Museum on Clements Ferry Road drew an overflow crowd of concerned local residents. When asked to identify the county’s most crucial needs in coming decades, affordable housing was a chief concern, according to Berkeley County Planning Director Jeff Tyndall.

And it continues to be a thorny issue for New Urban advocates because of the paradoxical nature of communities such as Daniel Island, according to author Talen.

"Amenity-rich places command a high price," she wrote. "The laws of supply and demand, together with weak affordable-housing subsidies, have ensured a lack of real diversity despite the inclusion of mixed housing types.

"Maintaining a mix of income, ages and races and ethnicities is not just about figuring out which housing assistance program to push for," Talen wrote. "Fitting a diverse group of people into one neighborhood requires thinking about what each group needs and how those diverse needs can be sustained in a walkable environment, not to mention a consideration of how the diverse groups are supposed to get along, how its residents are supposed to work together to make the neighborhood collectively effective and how the neighborhood is supposed to maintain itself in the long term."