A Heavy Load
Nationally, for every dollar a working family saves on housing, it spends 77 cents more on transportation. This was one of the dramatic findings from the Center’s earlier study, Something’s Gotta Give, which reflects the basic tradeoff many working families face between paying a greater share of their income for housing or enduring long commutes and high transportation costs. But how does this tradeoff play out at the local level? Are there metropolitan areas in which this tradeoff is more or less pronounced? Where do working families end up living within each area, and how does the availability of housing affect their choices? And how does the varying cost of housing and transportation within a region affect families’ combined housing and transportation burdens?
To answer those questions, the Center conducted a new study whose results are summarized in this publication. Among other innovations, this study presents, for the first time, the combined housing and transportation cost burdens of working families in 28 metropolitan areas at the neighborhood level. It also provides an overview of where working families live in each of the 28 areas and how their location decisions affect their commute times and costs.
