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First launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Transportation (DOT) in November 2013, the Location Affordability Index (LAI) provides ubiquitous, standardized household housing and transportation cost estimates at the Census block-group level for the majority of the populated area of the United States. Because what is affordable is different for everyone, users can choose among eight household profiles—which vary by household income, size, and number of commuters—and see the impact of the built environment on affordability in a given neighborhood location while holding household demographics constant.
In Version 1, these estimates were originally generated with data from several federal sources and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) data from Illinois EPA using separate OLS regression models for household housing costs, VMT, car ownership, and transit usage. Version 2, in addition to updating all the constituent data sources, represents a significant a methodological and technical advance from Version 1, modelling auto ownership, housing costs, and transit usage for both homeowners and renters are concurrently using simultaneous equation modeling (SEM) to capture the interrelationship of these factors. The inputs to the SEM include these six endogenous variables and 18 exogenous variables, with VMT still modeled separately due to data limitations.
To learn more about the Location Affordability Index (v.2.0) visit: https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/location-affordability-index/.
Data Dictionary: DD_Location Affordability Indev v.2.0
Date of Coverage: 2008-2012