Combined housing and transportation costs account for nearly half of the average household’s budget. While housing expenditures are usually easy to determine, transportation costs are much less transparent. The Location Affordability Index provides consumers, researchers, and policymakers information about transportation costs related to housing. LAI data is available for download as well as published as a web service for use by other web sites and app developers.
The Location Affordability Index (LAI) consists of estimates of the combined cost of housing and transportation at the Census block-group level. LAI data is calculated for each of the 942 Core Based Statistical Areas and covers neighborhoods where 94% of the U.S. population lives using statistical regression modeling (see Data and Methodology for more information on LAI modeling and methodology).