w00t! Not at all surprised to see Indianapolis atop the list. My brother still wonders why I'm not interested in moving out to California ...

Nothing in the DC Metro / Fairfax County VA made the least affordable?!?!?!? I'm shocked.

Youngstown, Warren, Boardman, OH-PA

How is that PA? Also, I can attest to how incredibly cheap it is to live there. Too bad there are so few jobs that pay well.

Seems like a lot of the most affordable cities are places losing lots of jobs.

I wonder if that's related somehow... hmmm...

As my roomates often say, "The middle of the country is cheap, man, dirt cheap".

@janetcarol: In April 2008 I relocated to Arlington, VA after three years in New York City. Trust me, as disturbing as it sounds, DC is way cheaper.

In NYC, I made a respectable income at a respectable job, I lived in the ghetto with roommates (literally, my roommate and I were the only white people in our building or on our street), I lived on $20 a week's worth of bread, pasta, and peanut butter, I went over a year without buying new clothes or shoes, until mine finally cracked beyond repair, and I was still unable to save a cent. NYC is seriously endangering itself with regards to a middle class, because only the very bottom rung and top couple of rungs of society have a place to live in the city anymore. Harlem, Brooklyn, and Queens are all gentrifying into million-dollar condos.

In Arlington, my fiancé and I do well enough together for a pair of late-20somethings. We can't afford one of the $750,000 houses, to be sure, but my grocery bills are about 25% less than in NYC, consistently, on everything, and our electric and gas bills are less than 1/3 of what they were in NYC. So yeah, DC's expensive, but... New York is just astronomical.

I have no confidence in that report. They left out Chicago but used sales and property taxes in the calculations. Chicago has high property taxes, high rents and the highest sales tax in the country.

@EM: It's broken out by metro area and that's basically Youngstown, OH and surrounding area's that identify being "part" of Youngstown. Warren, Troy, Farmington Hills, MI are all suburbs of Detroit as well so it's likely they are referring to Detroit metro and the list of Detroit as well is referring to Detroit city.

Just my understanding on it.

I think the main conclusion I've drawn from this article is this...

There's something wrong with Ohio.

Figures...all the cheaper places have wintry weather.

So much for leaving the Midwest! *sobs, unpacks*

El Paso is on the LEAST affordable? I wonder why.

The methodology appears sloppy, with the mixing of counties and cities. [e.g., Does "New York City" mean the 5 boroughs; does "Los Angeles" include both city and county, etc?]

@janetcarol: Apparently, you've never tried to rent a studio in the ass-end of Brooklyn (still at least $1400).

Affordable yes, but who'd want to live in any of those places? [ducks].

Is Newark on there because the drug lords, pimps, or gangs may steal all of your stuff kill you and then sell your shit back to your family for a profit?

Seriously in NJ the rest of the state (minus the other cities that are on this plan) pay their property taxes, so what exactly about that city is expensive? other than it's in NJ :P

@heybtbm: Having grown up in Cleveland I can confirm that yes, there is something wrong with Ohio... I feel like the whole state is slowly dying. But not as fast as Michigan.

@janetcarol: Each area had to have 500,000 residents. DC barely clears that mark, and while there are 6M in the DC Metro area, I'm not sure any of the individual jurisdictions had that many.

But Washington is still cheaper than NYC or SF.

Yep. they're affordable. Are they places I'd want to live? Nope.

NYC is dropping though. Apartments are much cheaper than they were 18 months ago.

"I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and that's as hard-scrabble a place as you're going to find. I'll show you around sometime and you'll see -- it's a hell hole. An absolute jerkwater of a town. You couldn't stand to spend a weekend there. It's just an awful, awful sad place, filled with sad, desperate people with no ambition. Nobody, I mean nobody, but me, has ever come out of that place. It's a genetic cesspool. So don't be telling me that I'm part of the Washington elite, because I come from the absolute worst place on earth -- Scranton, Pennsylvania. And Wilmington, Delaware, is not much better."

i am surprised pittsburgh didn't make this list. it's my favorite major metropolitan area due to the fact that i could rent, like, a 3-br house for what i pay for one bedroom in an apartment in the former ghetto in brooklyn, ny. D:

also, lol at half the cities being in michigan/ohio. egad, poor auto industry...

@janetcarol: I moved to Alexandria from Denver and while my rent is exactly double, my car insurance and electric and local sales tax are half what they used to be. But, if I was making minimum wage, or anywhere near it, I would find the area to be prohibitively expensive

There should be some weighting based on quality of life, poverty levels, etc.

Some places (like Detroit) are cheap because they are crime ridden and have massive unemployment, so you can buy homes for a dollar. taking the median income doesn't really paint the full picture because if there are no jobs then there is no demand for housing, and people with very low income can afford to live in the squalor that is available.

It would make the difference between showing where there is cheap housing in crumbling cities versus showing where people have jobs and live comfortably. I would imagine the lists would show less rust belt and more Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas.

Not sure why Chicago and our 10.5% sales tax isn't included on the list.

Detroit?

How about "livable" cities...

Newark, NJ only benefits because it looks cheap against NYC...unless it has had a renewal of some sorts. Last I heard the Newark city gov't was cracking down on the outlawed razor wire topped fences to try to make the city more presentable. Problem was that the businesses without razor wire topped fences were getting hit more often... For those who don't know razor wire is bad-ass sheet metal coils with spikes on it, it makes standard barbed wire look like nursey school level...

Who in their right mind is willingly paying to live in the hell hole known as Newark? I guess when the rest of the state's taxpayer's are picking up the tab for your schools and inept government, you can afford to be expensive.

@EM: But the jobs pay well enough to buy a house and live in the area. You may make 20-30K more living in NYC but that may still give you a worst standard of living.

er

Boston isn't on the list? Really?

@zlionsfan:

I'm surprised Chicago is not on the least affordable list. I know people who work out this way and make the commute from Indiana because cost of living is cheaper and it's not all THAT far of a drive.

@zlionsfan:
why? i couldn't wait to leave after high school. housing may be cheap, but if i can't find a job, i don't see the point in staying.

@Dillon Barfield: Metro Boston and Metro DC are at almost the exact same price point. (I grew up in Boston, then went to New York, then to DC -- money-wise, living in DC feels like "back home" in Boston. And both are piles cheaper than NYC.)

@gertymac: I grew up in northern Iowa. My 2 bedroom nice apartment that I lived in back around 2005 was $450 a month. A pound of beef was $2.50 and gas was around $1.20 from what I remember. That was just 3 years ago. Unfortunately the city was a bit run down and old much like everything in Iowa. It was quaint and boring so I left.

@Skankingmike:

I just recently moved away from Newark after living there for a few years, and I'm not surprised to see it on this list. It's all very recent developments, like the new waterfront, the new Devils stadium, the corporate HQs that are downtown, and overpriced condos that are pushing some of the rabble further up the hill. Pair that with a 10 minute PATH ride into WTC and a salivatingly high concentration of Brazilians Down Neck, and Newark's not a bad place to be! Occasional drug dealers, sure, but there isn't much by way of gangs and downtown's not unsafe even at night.

That's all downtown though; the West Ward is still a mess, and the problems from the tax base that come out of Essex County are more from towns further up the hill like Irvington, which is a hot mess.

@Skankingmike: Quote: The index was created by calculating what percentage of a city's residents making the median income can afford a house in that city.
It's based upon how affordable housing is to the resdients of the area. Metro-Newark is a poor area, thus putting most housing out of reach for residents. I suspect that's why El Paso makes this list too.

@Saboth: Is that why everyone there clings to their guns and bibles?

@Saboth:

Everytime I hear Scranton, PA I wonder how Dunder Mifflin is doing these days :-P

@Skankingmike:

And that is why NJ government is so expensive. We have cities full of people that are absolutely useless that only entity that can employee them is the government.

NJ State, County and Local Governments, employing the unemployable.

@narq:
I have to admit, and it's awful, but my preconceived notion of the mid-west as overly conservative is really what scares me away from there.

@Gene Gemperline: I agree, i really expected to see our city on the least affordable list. Maybe we're number 11.

@Quake 'n' Shake: I know Newark, I have a friend who works at the court house there and she has to be escorted daily to and from the parking garage.

@Excited_Utterance: Occasional Drug dealers? Are you serious? I lived in NJ my whole life and every time I had to be in Newark I thought i was gonna get shot being Downtown.

One of my Employee's lives in a bad part of Newark. they have cab drivers who aren't cab drivers they basically pull up to you you get in, and they lock in you in the cab and hold you hostage until you pay them money.

I had a neighbor who decided that he wanted to have sex with a prostitute so he went into Newark the Pimp came busting in and shot him, killing him instantly.

And Spike TV is doing their second season of DEA in Newark siting it as the worst city for being one of the worst cities in the country for drug transport.

I'm sorry that list is bunk

@Dillon Barfield: Boston is SUPER expensive. Me and my wife want to move back there but the prices are just so damn expensive to live in the north end or any of the nice parts of Boston.

@janetcarol: I can still buy cigarettes for around $3.60 a pack in NoVa (at least before that damnable tax kicks in), so I consider it affordable

@janetcarol: Having lived in 5 of the top 10 (SF, LA, Honululu, Santa Ana, NY) and also DC, I agree with DC not making this list. Trust me you can find ways to blow your cash just as fast in DC but I found affordable housing in good areas right outside the DC line (Bethesda and Arlington).

Did they also look at the job markets for each city?

@Quake 'n' Shake: Probably explains why DC and surroundings aren't on that list. Houses are pretty expensive still but the median is probably a lot higher than the rest of the country. I don't feel like we have gotten hit yet with a lot of the layoffs since most of the jobs here are government contracts.

@janetcarol:
If you're shocked, then you clearly haven't lived in those cities. DC is nowhere near comparable to those towns.

@gertymac: Try Austin -- there's a reason we're called "Left Texas".

@tedyc03: DC is about in the middle of their list--it's 103 (starting with most affordable) out of 222. That's described as "Washington-Arlington-Alexandria DC-VA-MD-WV."

@edwardso: I suspect the point may be that comparatively few people there are making minimum wage, since the index is based on correlating income to housing.

@Saboth: I could see Wilmington getting hit hard in this credit crunch.

I wonder if Scranton had to do any pushing to be featured on the Office. It doesn't paint a glorious picture of the town, but it's the first thing I think of when I hear Scranton. (aside from the penguins)