Traditionally the discussion about affordability has focused on housing. In late 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Location Affordability Index (LAI) Portal - a dataset that uses models to estimate the median amount households spend on housing as well as transportation. The tool is meant to help people understand the combined costs of housing and transportation, and affordability, associated with living in a specific neighborhood. However, there was virtually no validation of the estimates in any setting, and no studies delving into how accurate the estimates are in the context of “shrinking” or weak-market cities.

To better understand the real costs of housing and transportation in a declining urban context, NITC researchers conducted a household-level survey on those financial burdens and budget trade-offs across 12 Census-tracts in Cleveland, Ohio. The survey found that less than 9% of those households resemble any household type used by the LAI, and that the assumptions of the LAI tool did not hold true in “shrinking cities”–cities that have experienced significant population loss. The particular difficulty with the shrinking city context is that as urban sprawl continues unchecked, the rate of land consumption grossly outpaces the rate of population change. As jobs move out from the city center toward more suburban locations, there is very little population growth to support funding that would enable transit agencies to get people to those jobs. The report provides policy recommendations to help transit authorities overcome these transportation burdens, including ridesharing and van pools, bike share programs, and better bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

"Dr. Ganning’s thorough and convincing analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Location Affordability Index led HUD to rethink using Census block groups as the geographical unit of analysis. As a result, Version 3 of the Location Affordability Index (published in April 2019) was generated at the Census tract level, addressing multiple data and methodological problems identified by Dr. Ganning in her 2017 article."
Josh Geyer, Office of Environment and Energy, High-Performance Buildings Team, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Learn more about the project What do we know about Location Affordability in U.S. Shrinking Cities? led by Joanna Ganning, Cleveland State University