1 Housing Inequality: Concepts and Measures Free Online FlashCards

What does housing inequality describe?

Housing inequality is unequal access to housing that is affordable, stable, and adequate, as well as to neighborhoods with different opportunities.

What housing-cost shares commonly signal cost burden and severe cost burden?

Housing costs above $30\%$ of household income commonly indicate cost burden; costs above $50\%$ commonly indicate severe cost burden. These are guidelines, not complete measures of need.

How is the housing cost-to-income ratio calculated?

Housing cost burden = $\frac{\text{monthly housing costs}}{\text{monthly household income}} \times 100$.

Which costs may be included in a homeowner’s housing costs?

Homeowner housing costs may include mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, utilities, and applicable fees.

What does an affordable-housing gap compare?

An affordable-housing gap is the difference between the number of homes affordable to an income group and the number of households in that group.

What does residual income reveal about housing affordability?

Residual income is the income left after housing costs. It helps show whether a household can meet other needs, which a cost-to-income ratio alone may not reveal.

What is residential segregation?

Residential segregation is the uneven distribution of groups, often defined by race or ethnicity, across neighborhoods within a larger area.

What does the dissimilarity index measure?

The dissimilarity index measures evenness: how similarly groups are distributed across neighborhoods. A value of $0$ indicates an even distribution; $1$ indicates complete separation.

What do interaction and isolation indices estimate?

The interaction index estimates potential contact between different groups; the isolation index estimates a group’s exposure to members of its own group.

What spatial patterns do concentration, centralization, and clustering describe?

Concentration describes how much physical space a group occupies; centralization describes its proximity to the urban center; clustering describes how strongly its neighborhoods adjoin one another.

What time period does a HUD point-in-time count represent?

HUD’s point-in-time count is a one-night snapshot of people in specified sheltered and unsheltered situations; it does not count everyone who experiences homelessness over a year.

What counts as sheltered homelessness in a point-in-time count?

Sheltered homelessness means staying in an emergency shelter, transitional housing, or a Safe Haven.