Consultant Wendell Cox has an astute essay questioning the methodology of the Heavy Load report on the high combined cost of housing and transportation for working families in urban areas by the Center for Housing Policy. (Here's our post on the report last week, where we expressed some doubt about the numbers used).

As we noted, the Center implicitly argues that people who move farther away from their jobs to save on housing end up spending most all of the would-be savings on transportation. Cox points out that they backed into their numbers by using a "peer-reviewed" modeling technique to end up with transportation costs more than twice those cited in the readily available Department of Labor figures, and minimizing housing costs (this making more dramatic the cost of transportation as compared to that of housing) by using 2000 Census data, thus missing the dramatic jump in urban housing prices over the last few years.

While advocacy groups back into their numbers all the time, it is exceptional to see an affordable housing group, whose mission is to lay "the groundwork for the development of concrete and politically viable policies and programs that can be used to promote affordable housing across the country," use a methodology that minimizes the cost of housing.