详情

What Do We Know About Location Affordability in U.S. Shrinking Cities?

项目名称：	What Do We Know About Location Affordability in U.S. Shrinking Cities?
摘要：	In late 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Location Affordability Index (LAI) portal. Their dataset uses models to estimate the median amount households spend on housing and transportation at the block group level, and calculates �H + T Affordability,� the percent of household income spent on these items. In the project team's previous research, they analyzed 81 shrinking cities to determine how location affordability differs across various neighborhoods. The results suggest that households in declining neighborhoods, as compared to stable or redeveloping neighborhoods, face the greatest H + T affordability challenges in shrinking cities. Furthermore, in declining neighborhoods, virtually all of the additional affordability challenges encountered can be accounted for by differences in transportation affordability rather than housing. Since there is virtually no research to either validate or suggest bias in the LAI data, and a declining neighborhood in a shrinking city presents both a relatively common yet entirely dissimilar context to the norm, the project team feels that this data should be carefully calibrated to, and tested for, this setting. The project objectives include the completion of a literature review to establish hypotheses regarding reasonable household budget maximums (in terms of percent of income) and elasticities for transportation, and a comparison of those hypotheses to existing conditions as given by the LAI data for shrinking cities. The project team will use these hypotheses to construct a survey, to be sent to households in a subset of our sample of 81 cities, to determine whether the LAI data accurately estimate transportation costs for declining neighborhoods in shrinking cities. Our survey results will be supplemented by data from the United States (U.S.) Census Bureau regarding means of transportation to work, neighborhood demographics, and neighborhood socioeconomic conditions. The project team will conduct qualitative field work to better assess how households cope with unaffordable transportation costs, in terms of either selecting budgetary trade-offs, or in finding lower cost transportation solutions that are not adequately reflected in the LAI modeling process. Finally, the project team will synthesize this research to articulate a series of recommendations for improving the LAI data for shrinking cities contexts, and for informing local transportation policy to improve livability in declining neighborhoods.
状态：	Completed
资金：	$218780
资助组织：	Portland State University
管理组织：	Portland State University
项目负责人：	Hagedorn, Hau
执行机构：	University of Utah, Salt Lake City
主要研究人员：	Bartholomew, Keith
开始时间：	20150801
预计完成日期：	20170630
实际结束时间：	20170630