So You Think You Know Affordable Housing…?
On Thursday January 19 @ 2:00 EST, CNT and Reconnecting America unveil a new tool that shines a different light on housing affordability.
The traditional measure of whether or not housing is “affordable” is if it accounts for 30 percent or less of a household’s monthly budget. But how relevant is that measure today, when the second largest budget expense for the average household, after housing, is transportation?
We set out to develop a tool, the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, which would uncover the hidden cost of transportation embedded in our housing. After all, it’s the cost of housing and transportation that is a more meaningful measure of how much we can afford than housing alone, and, as we found out, the kind of community in which we live and where it’s located often determines how much we need to drive and how many cars we need to own–and therefore how much we need to spend on transportation.
Join CNT and Reconnecting America for an online discussion sponsored by the
Urban Markets Initiative of the Brookings Institution to learn more about this tool. Log in to KnowledgePlex on January 19 @ 2:00 EST.
