Understanding affordability
Housing & transportation costs in charleston
In survey results, listening sessions and community-led meetings, the message was clear: it is expensive to live in Charleston and for many, their wages aren’t keeping up with the rising price tag. In the Southeast region, Charleston’s cost of living comes in second to Washington, DC, where median household income is 28% higher.*
High housing costs contributes to an overall higher cost of living as compared to other metropolitan areas in the region. In a recent analysis published by Zillow, Charleston’s housing costs ranked higher than any other metropolitan area in the Carolinas.
*(Source: 2018 American Community Survey)
As part of our efforts to better understand the problem of affordability in Charleston, we worked with Community Data Platforms to analyze the challenge from multiple angles using the best data available.
In the housing labs and listening sessions, many people expressed that housing costs alone don’t tell the full picture; that it’s important to look at housing and transportation costs together. So that is exactly what we did.
Community Data Platforms created the interactive visual below to help us answer this question.
How to interact with the data in the visual below.
If you’re having trouble viewing the full image, use the bar at the bottom of your screen to scroll to the right, or click on the 3 dots in the top right corner of your window (in Chrome) and click the (-) to zoom out.
Click the tabs at the top (Introduction, Housing + Transportation, and Costs by Area) to display different information.
On the second tab “Housing + Transportation,” use the “Area of City” drop-down menu to select one or more areas of the city to compare the percentage of cost-burdened households.
On the third tab “Plan District Costs,” use the “Sort” drop-down menu to change the order of the columns to sort by housing or transportation costs.
Questions about the data? Contact us at cityplan@charleston-sc.gov
Stay tuned for more findings from our housing analysis.
Learn more about this and other topics we’ll be addressing in the plan by visiting the Explore tab.