According to the American Community Survey Summaries produced in 2009, public transportation use is declining in the US More than 300,000 people found alternative means of transportation to get to work and school compared to transportation data public than in the previous year. Most of the use of public transportation was in the large metropolitan cities, eg, New York, New Jersey, the Philadelphia area. Use of public transportation to get to work and school reached 30%, compared to the national average of 5%. Although the nation has not dramatically changed public transportation infrastructure in recent years, fewer than 5 of the nation’s 366 major metropolitan areas exceeded more than 10% of public transportation use for work. The three metropolitan areas that used the highest level of public transportation as their primary means of commuting to work and school, age 16+, and not working at home, are the New York, New Jersey, and Long Island area, followed by Chicago, Mandeville, Gillette area and finally the Washington DC, Arlington, Alexandria area. Each of these large metropolitan areas has a population of over one million. Although there was little change in the statistical data from 2008 to 2009, we can still see that as more people move to major metropolitan areas, the use of public transportation increases. This small change in statistical data from 2008 to 2009 is expected as the overall US population increases and our nation continues to grow.
Nationwide, nearly 2 in 5 renters are considered to be cost-burdened, meaning that the cost of housing, defined by the average total of utilities and rent combined, consumes more than 35 percent of your income. We arrived at this data on the Condition of the Rental Housing Market by analyzing the national average which currently estimates that 34.13% of the total population is renting, and of that percentage, 42.48% consider themselves overwhelmed. The figures for the 50 most densely populated metropolitan areas in the country demonstrate that there is a wide range of housing factors that affect the real estate market in each area and cannot be determined as a whole or individualized as a single social factor. Of those top 50 metropolises, the one with the lowest percentage of renters was Minneapolis, St Paul, Bloomington area, with only 25.57% of the population currently renting and 41.27% of those people considered distressed, leaving them with a rental vacancy rate of 5.91%. The area with the highest percentage of people renting was the Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana area with 49.27% of the population currently renting and a whopping 47.27% of those people consider themselves distressed leaving the city of angeles with a 5.29% rental vacancy rate. From this data, we can theorize that the rental market is becoming more competitive as more people choose to rent rather than buy their home. There is a direct relationship with the stricter housing regulations and the recent bankruptcies of some of the main mortgage banks in the country. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has tasked the Obama Administration with developing a housing reform proposal later this year that will include restructuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He hopes that a fundamental pillar of this policy proposal will be the permanent promotion of rental housing. Although this is just a proposal, it is a step toward change as America moves into the next century.
Property values continue to change as our economy tries to recover. The value of the property, as defined in this document, is what the current owner believes it would sell for if it were sold on the market today. All figures presented have been adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollar value. As a national average, property values have dropped 5.8% over the past year, but that is not to say that property values have dropped everywhere. Although hardest-hit area property values dropped 34% in Mercad, CA, values in some metropolitan areas increased as much as 19.7% in the Hattiesburg, MS area. Of the 50 most populous metro areas with a decline of at least 9% in median property value, one in five were located in California (6) or Florida (4), suggesting that beachfront properties They were the most affected. It is also noted that there is a large difference in median property values, regardless of the change in perceived value, in the US. For example, in the San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara area, median property value is estimated at $719,700, while the lowest median property value, out of the top 50 again, was the Buffalo, Niagara Falls area with a median property value of just $116,000.
With all this, we can assume a direct correlation between the economic situation and the percentage of people receiving Public Assistance in the last 12 months. More than 350,000 more people were approved for public assistance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) than the previous year. These benefits do not include things like social security, food stamps, and Medicaid. According to data from 2009, the assistance participation rate was 2.6%, defined by at least one person in the household who received public assistance in the last twelve months. Fourteen states had participation rates even higher than the national average, while twenty-one states had lower rates. Ten of the states with participation rates lower than the national average are located in the South and include Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and Arkansas. Twenty states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia had an increase in the participation rate. The rate for the other states did not show a significant change from the previous year. The state with the largest increase was Ohio, with almost 31,700 new beneficiaries over the previous year. Alaska had the smallest increase in the participation rate with only 91 new beneficiaries in 2009. Rhode Island, on the other hand, had a decrease in the rate with 1,722 fewer beneficiaries. All of this data is collected at a 90% confidence level, so you can be sure that it is comparably accurate to our best efforts.