If you purchased a home away from center city or your employment center to get more affordable housing, your efforts may have been futile because transportation fuel costs may have driven away any savings.

"A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families" found that in 17 of the 28 metropolitan areas studied, the average transportation expenses for working families with annual incomes from $20,000 to $50,000 were actually higher than their housing costs.

Overall, across all 28 metro areas, working families spend an average of 28 percent, or $9,700, of their incomes on housing and nearly 30 percent, or $10,400, on transportation, for an average combined housing-transportation cost that adds up to 57 percent of income. Transportation costs are based on auto ownership, auto use and public transit use and take into account the cost of commuting, as well as traveling for school, errands and other daily routines.

Matters are probably worse than the data suggests. The findings, determined by the Center for Housing Policy, the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference (NHC), are based on census and labor data that's years old.

While the share of income that working families devote to housing and transportation differed from metro area to metro area, the combined burden of the two expenses was remarkably similar across all areas. These combined costs range from a low of 54 percent in Pittsburgh to a high of 63 percent in San Francisco, with 25 of the 28 metro areas within three percentage points of the average combined burden of 57 percent.

The findings are not unlike those in "Driven To Spend", ongoing transportation cost research conducted by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which contributed to the "Heavy Load" report.

"Heavy Load" found that 85 percent of low- to moderate-income working family commuters in the 28 metro areas studied drive to work in private vehicles.

Commuters in some metro areas take advantage of public transit alternatives such as extensive rail systems and buses. By far, public transit serves the greatest share of working families in the New York metro area at 31 percent, followed by Chicago, IL, at 14 percent and Washington, DC, at 13 percent. The metro areas of Boston, MA, Honolulu, HI, Philadelphia, PA and San Francisco, CA all have an average of 12 percent of commuters taking public transit.

"Working families are increasingly moving further from their jobs to find affordable housing. Yet, we found that many of these families end up spending more on transportation costs than they save on housing," said Jeffrey Lubell, executive director of the Center for Housing Policy.

"Ultimately, these findings emphasize the importance of coordinating the development of housing and transportation policy, as well as expanding the supply of affordable housing close to both central city and suburban job centers, improving public transit in areas with lower housing costs and reducing the costs of commuting by car for working families."

Governments and industry certainly have roles to play in reducing both housing and transportation costs and auto makers are likewise pressed to engineer alternative fuel and more fuel efficient vehicles, but consumers also have a role to play.

Housing is no longer simply a location decision, but also how and if you can really afford to get from one location to another.

Published: October 18, 2006

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.