Eye-Popping Data: New Report From Citizens Budget Commission

Hey! Really?? A CITIZENS BUDGET COMMISSION!
Too bad the City of Mesa - where rent increases year-over-year are the highest in the nation - doesn't have one.
Three of the nation’s poorest cities are actually the most expensive places to live — when you factor in how much it costs to get around, and not how much it costs to pay the rent.
Mesa is growing fast > the road ahead
More Suburban Spawl
Car-Dependency Makes City Life Too Expensive
Reference > Streets Bog 15 Jan 2020
_________________________________________________________________________"That’s the takeaway from a new report from the Citizens Budget Commission that looked at median combined housing and transportation costs as a percentage of area median income, instead of housing costs alone.
When it comes to that expanded affordability metric, transit-rich, but housing-dear New York City actually ranks as the eighth most affordable metro among 20 peer cities.
The Center for Neighborhood Technology says spending 45 percent of your household income on housing and transportation combined is a good rule of thumb; New Yorkers are paying just a touch more, at 45.3 percent.
In this map, the yellow spots indicate a region where median combined housing and transportation costs are 45 percent of the median income, or less.
All the dark blue swaths represent communities where they’re more.

Source: Center for Neighborhood Technology.

If you consider only the cost of housing without transportation costs, by contrast, most of America meets the 30 percent affordability threshold accepted by most housing advocates, at least on a birds-eye view.
In this map, yellow represents places where the average Joe can afford his rent; blue zones are where the average Jane is struggling to pay the landlord.

Source: Center For Neighborhood Technology.

(By the way: if you’re in the mood to waste some time today, the “fact sheets” tab of the H+T index allows you to zero in on which places make the affordability grade, simply by entering a  ZIP code, city name, or state. Just in case you were looking for a reason to never move to Wyoming.)
And before you ask, no: the cities at the bottom of the list do not have secret expensive-yet-well-used public transportation systems.
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> The top city on CBC’s list, Washington, DC, also has the third highest rate of transit ridership, with 37.4 percent of Washingtonians using public transportation; only about 4 percent of Phoenicians do, and that helps land the Arizona capital at the bottom of the rankings.
> A one-day unlimited pass in the nation’s capital will run you $13; in Phoenix, it’s just $6.50.
It’s not hard to extrapolate that the Americans who pay the most for transportation are often doing so because they’re driving — and they’re often driving because the autocentric development pattern of the cities where they live functionally forces them to get behind the wheel if they want to make it to work.
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