Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Transportation The Road to Foreclosures
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 12:05 PM
Or "How Transportation Costs Affect Foreclosure Rates."
I've referenced Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) here before. I think I may have even posted some maps of their Housing + Transportation Affordability Index.
More recently, they looked at weekly and monthly trends in foreclosure filings and compared them with the weekly change in gas prices from 2000 to 2010.
"We found that whenever gas prices spiked, foreclosures typically followed within six to nine months," CNT president Scott Bernstein testified at the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee meeting in Memphis Monday.
CNT found that, in Memphis, the average cost of housing is about 27 percent of household income, but, combined with transportation, comes to 52 percent of are area median household income.
For households earning 80 percent of median income, the costs rose to 33 percent for housing and 63 percent for housing plus transportation.
"If we don't take gas prices into account, the next time energy costs spike, we're likely to run into this again," Bernstein said.
Comments (2)
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Uh, that would be the plan on how to destroy America. Force us to spike the gas prices.
It works every time. The only way to block it is to get off oil.
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I currently live in NYC where mass transportation is the norm. Being that the oil market is constantly unstable and gas prices will never be as affordable as they once were, I believe that creating stronger infrastructure in Memphis's mass transportation would greatly reduce the financial stress felt by many. I believe there was previous talk about creating a commuter train, but Memphis could also benefit from a better bus system, and more bike routes. Any efforts in bridging the segmented portions of Memphis will create benefits not only for stressed finances, but also for the improvement and development of the city.
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