by Blake Warenik, National Housing Conference and Center for Housing Policy
Washingtonians are incredulous to learn that, despite the highest housing costs in the nation, the D.C. region is the nation’s most affordable metro area when factoring in America’s highest median income and the region’s moderate transportation costs. Those were some of the findings from Losing Ground: The Struggle of Moderate-Income Households to Afford the Rising Costs of Housing and Transportation, the new report from the Center for Housing Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, released Thursday.
But many moderate- and low-income residents aren’t sharing in the windfall, just straining under the metro area’s astronomical housing costs.