DOCUMENT DOWNLOADSPDF: Housing State of the Region
If you think it’s gotten more expensive to live in Hamilton County, you’re right.
While the median cost of home ownership has gone up 33.4 percent since 2000, median income has increased only 23.3 percent. The gap is even worse for local renters, whose costs have gone up 27.5 percent, far outpacing their income growth of 11.1 percent, according to a new study by the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies.
Ochs Center President David Eichenthal calls the issue a “different sort of affordability problem.”
“Our cost of renting or owning is relatively low compared to other areas around the country … but wages just haven’t kept pace with the cost of housing,” he said. “In lots of other places where there’s a housing affordability issue, it’s based on availability [of housing], but that’s not what we’re seeing here … here it’s really a wage and income issue.”