3 ms·
Also on a re-read, I note that the author was not using housing prices as a measure of affordability: > Affordability wasn’t hard; I mapped all the census trac
by curtis 12y ago
Also on a re-read, I note that the author was not using housing prices as a measure of affordability:
> Affordability wasn’t hard; I mapped all the census tracts in the country that had a median income within $10,000 of mine, both above and below.
I can't speak to other neighborhoods, but in the case of Capitol Hill I suspect that this measure is a poor proxy for affordability. Capitol Hill residents might be disproportionately people who are willing to pay a premium to live in the City.
- gerbal 12y agoInstead of using income as a proxy for affordability, using actual cost of rent by census tract would be way better. The ACS data he used includes Rent values and property values, both of which are a much better measure of affordability than income. Or the sort of data provided by Kwelia. [1] http://kwelia.com http://kwelia.com
- TheCoelacanth 12y agoThat's going to be a terrible measure of affordability. Measuring affordability by median income will tell you that Loudoun County, VA (a suburb of DC) is the most expensive place in the US to live. However, it's actually much cheaper to live there than to live in DC, which is cheaper to live in than New York or San Francisco.