Low-wage jobs-housing fit: identifying locations of affordable housing shortages |
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| Authors: | Chris Benner Alex Karner |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA;2. School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology, 245 Fourth St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0155, USA |
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| Abstract: | Finding the right jobs-housing balance has long been an important concern for urban planners. More recently, attention has turned to jobs-housing fit – the extent to which housing price is well matched to local job quality. Prior analyses have been constrained by a lack of local data on job quality, making it difficult to identify the geography and scale of the problem. We introduce a new methodology for calculating the low-wage jobs-housing fit at both a jurisdiction and neighborhood scale that was designed in collaboration with affordable housing advocates and has been directly applied in urban planning and affordable housing policy efforts. Low-wage fit is particularly important because of ongoing difficulties with affordable housing provision and the disproportionate benefits of reducing transportation costs for low-income earners. We use the calculated metric at both a city and neighborhood scale to identify what can be learned from a low-wage jobs-housing fit metric that is not evident in traditional measures of jobs-housing balance. In contrast to jobs-housing balance, the low-wage fit analysis clearly highlights those jurisdictions and neighborhoods where there is a substantial shortage of affordable housing in relation to the number of low-wage jobs. Because of the geographic coverage of the data sources used, the results can be widely applied across the United States by affordable housing advocates, land-use planners, and policy makers. |
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| Keywords: | Affordable housing jobs-housing balance jobs-housing fit regional planning |
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