Category: Map of the Month

Transportation Costs and Burdens Across the Southeast 

Source: Center for Neighborhood Technology 

Transportation is a vital household need. Without access to reliable transportation, people may struggle to hold down a job, get their kids to school, get groceries, and obtain medical care. We live at a time when there are more forms of transportation available than ever before, but often transportation access is defined by affordability and the built environment. 

A household is considered transportation burdened when it spends 15% or more of its annual income on transportation. The widely accepted threshold for combined housing and transportation affordability is 45% of household income, with no more than 30% going to housing and 15% to transportation. Yet a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that in 2024, American households spent an average of 50% of their income on housing and transportation combined, well above that threshold. 

This month’s map draws on data from the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s (CNT) Housing and Transportation (H&T) Affordability Index to visualize transportation burden and annual vehicle miles traveled for moderate-income households across the Southeast. As CNT describes it, the H&T Index expands the conventional definition of housing affordability (rent and utilities) to include transportation costs, so that households and policymakers better understand the true cost of where people live. The model captures costs across three categories: auto use, auto ownership, and public transit use. 

In the Southeast, the most transportation-burdened households are concentrated in rural areas along the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi Delta, and in the Black Belt, where limited transit infrastructure and low-density development make car ownership not a choice but a necessity. The 13 most highly burdened census tracts fall across West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia.  

Vehicle miles traveled data confirm what the burden maps suggest: Urban areas are the most transportation-efficient locations, where density and transit access reduce dependence on personal vehicles.  

A 2024 study published in the Journal of Transport Geography found that, compared with urban areas, rural areas in the United States have less connected pedestrian, bicycling, and transit infrastructure. Rural residents also tend to travel longer distances to access essential services and opportunities, resulting in a form of “forced car” reliance. At the same time, lower incomes and higher poverty rates among rural populations can increase the financial burden of transportation. 

These local patterns are compounded by a national surge in transportation costs since 2020. New car prices have risen approximately 29% since March 2020, while used car prices have climbed about 34%, both outpacing overall inflation, as shown by the consumer price index (CPI) charts below.  

Car insurance costs have also risen 56% since January 2020, according to BLS data, though premiums saw a slight dip in 2025. For households that rely on gasoline, costs have been particularly volatile, as pump prices remain susceptible to geopolitical disruptions and global supply shifts.  

These affordability issues strain household finances most for low- and moderate-income households in the Southeast, who have the highest vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and experience the highest transportation burdens. Faced with these pressures, many consumers are turning to used electric vehicles as a more affordable alternative.  

Taken together, these findings provide a data-driven lens for identifying where transportation burden is most acute in the Southeast and where targeted investments, whether in transit service, pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure, EV infrastructure, or land use policy, can have the greatest impact.  

SEEA’s Energy Efficient Transportation portfolio works to address these challenges across the Southeast through EV policy guidance, utility electrification programs, and technical assistance to help states and communities expand access to cleaner, more affordable transportation options.  

Data Considerations 

The maps here draw on CNT’s 2022 data, which remains among the most comprehensive available. Yet many national datasets do not track transportation burden at a granular level, and key sources like the U.S. DOT’s Local Area Transportation Characteristics for Households (2017) and HUD’s Location Affordability Index (2019) predate the cost spikes we have seen since 2020. As transportation costs continue to shift, updated and locally specific data will be essential for planners and policymakers to understand the true scale of the affordability crisis facing our region. 

Where the contractors aren’t: mapping workforce deserts in the Southeast

By: William Bryan

Of all the barriers to scaling energy efficiency (and there are many), none are as fundamental as having people who can do the work. Yet throughout the Southeast, the workers who are essential to carrying out energy efficiency upgrades don’t exist in meaningful numbers, especially in communities where they are needed the most. 

This month’s map makes this problem visible by mapping contractor deserts across the Southeast. Using data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2025 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER) and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, we calculated the number of efficiency workers per 1,000 housing units for every county in the Southeast. To gauge how this workforce aligns with housing needs, we estimated local housing upgrade need by layering in data on the age of housing and household income. 

Across the Southeast, there are roughly 429,000 upgrade-relevant workers who serve around 38.5 million homes, one worker for every 90 households. But this masks wide disparities in access to skilled workers throughout the region. 

We found 190 counties across the Southeast that are in “crisis,” where high housing upgrade demand meets low workforce capacity. Even where they are not actively facing a labor crisis, more than half of all counties in the South are either at risk of becoming, or already are, workforce deserts. Across all desert and at-risk counties, the ratio is one worker for every 206 homes, with a ratio of one for every 411 homes in the most severely underserved counties. 

Geographically, workforce deserts are concentrated in Appalachia and the Black Belt regions. “Crisis” counties are especially prevalent in eastern Kentucky and virtually all of West Virginia, where high rates of older housing and limited financial resources have contributed to a housing stock in need of upgrades. These are also communities without a contractor market robust enough to serve this need, a result of the lack of local projects, travel distances from larger markets, and low household incomes that cannot sustain significant projects. Kentucky leads the Southeast with 33 counties in crisis, followed by West Virginia with 32. Taken together, just these two states make up a third of all crisis counties in the Southeast. 

The other major concentration of crisis areas runs throughout western Mississippi, northern Louisiana, rural Arkansas, and the Black Belt of Alabama. Like Appalachia, these communities have aging housing, deferred maintenance, and a contractor market that is insufficient to meet local upgrade needs. Louisiana’s Evangeline Parish, for instance, has around 20 home upgrade workers serving 14,500 homes, or one per 726 households. 

In Dallas County, Alabama, just 80 workers serve nearly 19,000 housing units. This shortfall is especially stark given that 39% of all housing in Selma was destroyed by a major tornado in 2023. Despite initiatives from Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA), the City of Selma, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to fund and support disaster recovery and home upgrades, these efforts require more workers than currently serve the community to meet the scale of need. 

It is worth noting that our analysis likely understates the problem. The data we are using locates workers where their employers are based, not where they actually perform work, which means that rural communities surrounded by stronger retrofit markets in nearby cities may appear better served than they are. We crosschecked these findings with a dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau that tracks workforce mobility and found a consistent picture. In some states, this data showed that construction workers who live in rural areas regularly commute to urban markets where there is ready work and available capital, rather than serving their home communities. 

The outlook for communities who face workforce shortages is not improving. The uneven programmatic and financing landscape for home upgrades may drive contractors to serve higher-income markets, while exacerbating deferred maintenance and expanding upgrade needs in the places least equipped to address them.  

At the federal level, programs that have traditionally supported weatherization, retrofit financing, and workforce development – such as the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Tax Credit (25C), and the Training for Residential Energy Contractors (TREC) grants program – have been proposed for elimination or already cut.  

Meanwhile, the construction workforce is aging, with almost 15% of the industry reaching retirement age in the next decade. This will place further stress on underserved and even adequately served areas if these workforce gaps are not filled.  

We believe that these findings point to three conclusions for program designers, funders, and policymakers working to close the contractor gap in the Southeast and expand access to energy efficiency: 

First, Appalachia and the Black Belt should be priority geographies for workforce development investments. Crisis counties in these areas have the most significant overlap between housing need and a lack of workforce capacity in the Southeast. They are least likely to be reached by market solutions or programs designed for communities with a more robust workforce, and they must be engaged on their own terms. 

Second, retraining existing workers is a key short-term opportunity. When we used the broadest definition of the energy efficiency workforce (including all HVAC workers, not just those working on high-efficiency equipment), 99 counties looked adequate despite being contractor deserts when the focus was turned to upgrade-relevant workers. This suggests that these areas have contractors who are doing conventional HVAC work but could be trained to perform high-performance retrofits like heat pump installations. 

Finally, closing workforce gaps requires a sustained, place-based strategy. SEEA has deep experience working on this through research, policy, and workforce development initiatives across the Southeast. At a local level, we have leveraged our research to work with municipal partners and community-based organizations on a range of workforce development initiatives. This includes working with the City of Selma, Alabama, and Southface Institute to train building officials, as well as a successful multi-year program to train underserved contractors in Georgia, with the Georgia Hispanic Construction Association (GHCA), Gwinnett Housing Corporation, and Lucky Shoals Community Association. At a regional level, SEEA has led multiple statewide studies of building activity and has provided education to building officials and contractors in seven states through our Building Energy Code Circuit Rider Program. Finally, we have also engaged new stakeholders to address workforce gaps through collaborative research and policy engagement through our Southeast Energy Insecurity Project (SEIP) and BRESE Collaborative.  

These efforts have built critical workforce infrastructure throughout the South, but as our contractor desert maps show, there is still much work to be done. Mapping the problem is the first step. Connecting these maps to last-mile solutions is the work ahead.

By Laura Diaz-Villaquiran

Data: U.S. Census Bureau ACS (2020–2024); U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA); U.S. Department of Energy LEAD Tool 

Across Arkansas, patterns of population change and energy burden are closely connected. The state consumes nearly 60% more energy than it produces, and while its electricity prices are among the ten lowest nationally, affordability varies widely depending on income, housing quality, and local economic conditions. For many low-to-moderate income households, energy costs still represent a significant share of monthly expenses. 

This analysis examines how population change intersects with energy burden statewide. Communities experiencing growth generally benefit from newer housing stock, active labor markets, and expanded economic opportunity factors associated with lower energy costs relative to income. Declining communities, by contrast, often contend with shrinking economies, aging and inefficient housing, and elevated energy burdens that compound existing hardship. 

A Tale of Two Counties: 

In Arkansas, Benton County and Phillips County illustrate these differences. Benton County, located in northwest Arkansas, has experienced sustained growth, with a population increase of 17% between 2020 and 2025. This growth is supported by a strong labor market, with employment increasing by 7.1% between 2022 and 2023, and significant residential development, with 4,453 building permits issued in 2024. 

Benton County also has a more diverse population, with 12.7% foreign-born residents and 15.8% of households speaking a language other than English at home. In Benton, the median household income is $93,506. Homeownership is relatively high at 67%, and 94.4% of households have broadband access. Median monthly housing costs include $1,717 for owners with a mortgage and $1,277 for renters. 

Phillips County, located in the Mississippi Delta, presents a different picture. The county experienced a population decline of 13.7% over the same period, alongside a 5.2% decline in employment between 2022 and 2023 and only 16 building permits issued in 2024. 

Phillips County is 61.8% Black, 34.5% White, and 2.5% Hispanic or Latino, with a much smaller foreign-born population than Benton County (1.5%).  

In Phillips County, the median household income is $40,134, and 35.8% of residents live in poverty, over four times the rate of Benton County. 

Homeownership stands at 51.2%, and 79.3% of households have broadband access. The median gross rent in Phillips is $737, reflecting lower housing costs but also lower incomes and limited economic opportunity for its residents. 

Energy costs represent a disproportionately large share of income for Phillips County residents. Low-to-moderate-income households carry an average energy burden of approximately 12%, double that of Benton County. Energy poverty researchers define energy burdens of 6% to be high and burdens above 10% severe.  

These differences underscore deep regional disparities in the Arkansas–Mississippi Delta, where counties such as Ashley, Chicot, Lee, and Mississippi experience a compounding cycle of population loss, elevated poverty, and severe energy burdens.  

SEEA’s work focuses on these regional differences by bringing together cross-sector partners to align data, programs, and policy. Insights like these help target energy efficiency investments, inform workforce development strategies, and support solutions that improve affordability and resilience. By connecting data to action, this approach supports more consistent and measurable progress across communities in the Southeast. 

By Will Bryan

Housing in the Southeast is aging, and the cost of living in it is getting more expensive. As we noted last month, around 40% of housing in the region was built before 1980, when the nation’s first minimum standards for energy efficiency were implemented. For residents of older homes, occupancy can come with an unexpected tax: the high costs of deferred maintenance and inefficiencies, not to mention the health and safety impacts of living in substandard housing. 

These burdens are not distributed equally. In this month’s map of the month, we assess the quality of housing in Savannah, Georgia using the metric of energy use intensity (EUI), a measure of energy use per square foot. EUI is a helpful proxy for housing quality and efficiency. Higher EUIs signal leaky buildings with heavy heating and cooling loads, while low EUIs indicate more efficient spaces. By modeling heating EUI at the census block group in Savannah, Georgia – a city where the housing stock is older than the state and regional average – we show where efficiency gaps are the widest and shed light on which communities are shouldering the impacts of our aging housing.  

As the map shows, EUI varies considerably across the City of Savannah. The most efficient households in the city use more than 4.5 times less energy per square foot than the least efficient households in the city, which translates into considerable monthly cost savings.  

The highest EUIs are concentrated on the outskirts of the historic district. While the housing here is nearly as old as that in the city’s core, these neighborhoods have had fewer resources available for retrofits and upgrades. The result is that it is less likely that homes in these areas have been retrofitted and they are more likely to experience the impacts of deferred maintenance. 

In Savannah, these issues are shaped by the legacies of the South’s long history of residential segregation. As the chart below indicates, block groups in the city with the highest EUIs all have majority Black populations, while census block groups with the lowest EUIs are all majority white. Additionally, homes in areas with low EUIs tend to be newer than the typical home, benefiting from modern construction techniques and minimum standards for building efficiency. This showcases the ways that segregation, a lack of housing choice, and unequal access to capital over the past century continue to circumscribe who has access to healthy and efficient housing today.