Abstract
Across the country, many large metropolitan areas face an acute shortage of housing, which is driving up housing prices. Anecdotal evidence suggests that households priced out of expensive urban neighborhoods are moving to the outer reaches of metropolitan areas, where they find cheaper housing but have longer-distance commutes. Growing commute distances may negatively affect the health and economic mobility of workers and, if cars are involved, have deleterious effects on the environment. In this study, UCLA researchers investigated the merits of this anecdotal evidence. The study examined the relationship between housing availability near workplaces and commute distance for lower-, medium-, and higher-wage workers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, including Los Angeles and Orange counties. Lower-wage workers have monthly wages less than $1,250; middle-wage workers have monthly wages between $1,251–$3,333; and higher-wage workers have monthly wages greater than $3,333. To do so, they drew on the work of Benner and Karner (2016) and analyzed “jobs-housing fit,” a measure of the adequacy of housing units of different prices matched to the wages of local workers. They set the household income threshold for lower-wage workers as $30,000 a year, two times the $1,250/month threshold of the lower-wage job category. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), affordable housing is defined as housing in which residents pay no more than 30% of their gross income for rent. Based on this criteria, lower-wage workers could afford rentals of $750/month (30% × $30,000/12)
