Myriam Igoufe

Graduation Semester and Year

2018

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning and Public Policy

Department

Urban and Public Affairs

First Advisor

Ivonne Audirac

Second Advisor

Stephen P. Mattingly

Abstract

Transportation is said to be affordable if it does not consume more than fifteen percent of a household’s budget. The widespread normative threshold of transportation affordability, becomes increasingly problematic as households slide down the income spectrum. Most fundamentally, low-income households have vastly different financial capabilities to purchase transportation services, hence to travel. Yet, little is known about the financial capabilities of very-low income households, and the use of a normative cost-to-income-ratio-threshold of transportation affordability obscures our understanding of travel capacities, in monetary terms, of these populations. Failure to comprehensively conceptualize and evaluate transportation affordability inevitably inhibits the formulation of adequate policies. The author critically postulates that assessing transportation affordability requires a framework of analysis which departs from the cost-to-income-ratio method and rather follows a residual income approach which, more holistically, gives greater considerations to a household’s financial ability to achieve a basic quality of life. The intent is to assess to what extent recipients of affordable housing assistance are facing affordability challenges and transport deprivation. In other words, after housing and other-non housing expenditures are met, what are HUD-assisted households left to travel with? The research focuses on the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program in the Dallas Fort Worth region in Texas. To further gain insight, the results of how much is left for transportation?--are translated into private transportation costs as well as transit passes equivalences. Subsequently, the author assesses whether the studied households reside within transit catchment areas. This research reveals sobering results. A great share of HUD-assisted families face cumulative barriers to accessing affordable transportation options, therefore threatening their ability to meet basic needs. Findings also show that, with insufficient means to afford private transportation, single-female led families are disproportionately facing cumulative barriers to access affordable transportation options by predominantly living outside of transit catchment areas—a situation hampering the potential for these household to achieve upward mobility. Finally, the model developed to explain the variations in residual income for HCV families found that, as opposed to the currently-dominant line of thought in affordability studies, the built environment is not of statistical significance. Rather, the research shows that the most important predictors in residual income are household characteristics such as the age of the head of household and the number of dependents in a family.

Keywords

Equity, Transportation, Affordable housing, Housing Choice Voucher, Poverty, Self-sufficiency

Disciplines

Public Affairs | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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