A recent study found that 44 percent of HUD-subsidized households spend at least 15 percent of their income on transportation. When transportation costs are included, total costs for HUD-subsidized households were lowest in the most compact metropolitan areas and highest in more spread out areas.
Transportation Affordability Index
Poverty in the suburbs exacerbated by auto-dependency
A recent article entitled “Driven into Poverty: Walkable urbanism and the suburbanization of poverty,” proposes that, “Due to the scarcity and cost of urban housing, low-income people are being driven away from walkable urbanism and into auto-dependent sub-urbanism”. This follows a report by the Brookings Institution, which found that by 2008, the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country was located in the suburbs.
Losing Ground: The Struggle of Moderate-Income Households to Afford the Rising Costs of Housing and Transportation (Center for Housing Policy and the Center on Neighborhood Technology, 2012)
The combined costs of housing and transportation in the nation’s largest 25 metro areas have swelled by 44 percent since 2000 while incomes have failed to keep pace, according to a new report from the Center for Housing Policy – the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference – and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The report details the challenges that American households face as the combined costs of housing and transportation consume an ever-larger share of household incomes.
Housing and Transportation Affordability Index (CNT, n.d.)
Website demonstrating that when transportation costs are included, exurban areas are very expensive to live in, even though real estate is cheap. Go to website