Center Goal #1 - Expanding Awareness of the Nation's Housing Challenges

By working closely with some of the nation’s leading housing researchers, as well as conducting our own analyses, the Center seeks to raise awareness of the housing challenges facing American households, with a particular emphasis on the housing needs of working families with low- to moderate-incomes. From the unique graphical style of our publications to our online, interactive databases, this research is presented in a format accessible to policymakers, the public and practitioners alike.

The flagship of the Center's work on expanding awareness of the nation's housing challenges is Paycheck to Paycheck, an online, interactive database that can be used to compare the cost of owning and renting a home with wages for more than 60 occupations in more than 200 metropolitan areas. Updated regularly, Paycheck to Paycheck also enables users to automatically select either five of the nation's fastest-growing occupations, or five community occupations that include police officers and teachers, and learn how these workers fare in housing markets across the country.

Other recent Center publications in this area include:

The Housing Landscape for America's Working Families (August 2007)
How many low- to moderate-income working families pay more than half their income for housing or live in severely substandard housing?  Has this situation gotten better or worse over the past few years?  What are housing conditions like in major metropolitan areas across the country?  This report examines these questions and more, documenting a 73 percent increase in the number of working families with critical housing needs between 1997 and 2005.

See also The Housing Landscape for America’s Working Families (April 2005), and Housing Problems of the Working Poor (April 2004)

A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families (October 2006)
How do low- to moderate-income working families balance their housing costs with commuting and other transportation costs that are part of their daily routines? Our analysis of 28 major metropolitan areas shows that, as working families move further from work to find housing they can afford, they end up spending as much, or more, on increased transportation costs as they save on housing. Individual profiles for the 28 metropolitan areas included in the report are also available.

Locked Out: Keys to Homeownership Elude Many Working Families with Children (March 2006)
Did you know that despite national homeownership rates that are at or near all-time highs in recent years, the rate for working families with children was higher back in 1978 than in 2003? This report details this disturbing trend and also tracks how the homeownership gap between white and minority working families with children has widened over the past 25 years.

See also Working Families With Children: A Closer Look at Homeownership Trends (May 2004)

Paycheck to Paycheck: Wages and the Cost of Housing in the Counties (July 2004)
The Center teamed up with the National Association of Counties for this special report that compares the income needed to buy a home or afford rental housing with the earnings of police officers, fire fighters, elementary school teachers, janitors, construction laborers and retail sales workers in 98 counties. The report shows that many workers face affordability problems in a variety of markets and in urban, suburban and rural landscapes across the country.

See also Paycheck to Paycheck: Wages and the Cost of Housing in America (May 2003)

America’s Newest Working Families: Cost, Crowding and Conditions for Immigrants (July 2003)
This was the first-ever, national look at the housing challenges facing immigrant working families with moderate incomes, comparing their housing situation to those of native-born Americans. We found that immigrant working families are 70 percent more likely than their native-born counterparts to spend over half their income on housing and that many immigrants experience high rates of crowding.

See also The Housing Landscape for America’s Working Families (April 2005), which updates the findings on the housing challenges of immigrant families.

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