Across the nation, housing costs are a huge burden on Americans.

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies did a huge study out on the state of the housing market.  Housing affordability was one of the key factors they evaluated.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the Harvard researchers were able to find how many people in each metropolitan area in the country faced a significant housing-cost burden, defined by the researchers as paying at least 30% of their income on housing costs.

The study includes some fantastic interactive maps that shed light on the housing situation for each metro area, including New Orleans.

According to most recent data, 40.9 million American households (35.3 percent) are cost burdened, including 19.8 million (17.1 percent) with severe burdens, meaning they spend over half of their income for housing. 

In New Orleans, an above average  37.7% of households are cost burdened, with a whopping 20.3% considered severe cost burdened.  In fact, overall New Orleans ranked 79 out of 381 in cost burden rank among metro areas, putting it into the top 20% of all metro areas nationwide.

In absolute numbers, New Orleans had 177,752 households with cost burdens, a median household income of $44,000, and monthly housing costs of $900.

Check out the interactive versions of the maps here, and the full study here.

 

 

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