Housing and Transportation Costs from Metro HUD Sustainabilty Grant Application.

Exhibit 2 of Metro's application for the HUD Sustainability Regional Planning grant includes a table that shows rental costs relative to income over time and also households who spend more than 45% of their income for Housing and Transportation costs (the national H+T standard).

I have extracted that data and put it into a table format HERE. 

Observations: 

1. A column in the rental cost relative to income table reads "Median monthly regional household income", but the data entered in that column is an ANNUAL income.
2. The 40.2% of Multnomah county households spending more than 45% of their income for housing and transportation is 40% LESS than the Metro MPO average, while the 86.2% of Clackamas County households is 29% MORE than the Metro MPO area average. 
3. For their planning purposes Metro does NOT use the H+T national index. Instead it uses a standard of 50% or more of income for housing and transportation cost for renter households. I have not been able to find any documentation from Metro of precisely what is included in their definition of income. If Metro uses Consumer Expenditure Survey data, their definition of income for H+T purposes may include income like food stamp income and may be after tax income.
4. Despite the obvious local H+T cost burden differences that this data indicates, Metro does not have a LOCAL goal of reducing the percentage of rental households spending more than 50% of their income for housing and transportation costs. Metro's only H+T cost burden "reduction" goal is a region wide goal found in Section 1.33 of the Framework Plan.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.