True Shelter and Family Cost Index
The fixed monthly nut, one county at a time.
Every household ledger has a fixed monthly column: rent or mortgage, homeowner or renter insurance, and — for a family with young children — childcare. The TSCI publishes that monthly nut at the county grain for all 3,222 U.S. counties plus Puerto Rico, with a 33,791-ZIP search index and a side-by-side comparator. Every value carries a provenance flag.
What this is, and what it is not
The True Shelter and Family Cost Index is an interactive map of the four monthly costs that anchor a household budget. D1 Rent uses Census ACS5 median gross rent at the county grain. D2 Mortgage builds the monthly owner cost from ACS5 median home value and the ACS5 owner-costs-with-mortgage table. D3 Insurance pulls state-level HO-3 and HO-4 premiums from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. D4 Childcare uses the Department of Labor's National Database of Childcare Prices. The composite returns a renter burden, an owner burden, and a price-to-income ratio for every county.
The tool is not a federal benchmark and it is not a forecast. The composite is a transparent aggregate documented in the methodology panel inside the tool and in the audit workbook below. Where federal or state data does not publish at the county grain — insurance, in particular — the tool inherits the state value and flags it. It does not invent a county-level insurance number that NAIC does not publish.
The publication snapshot uses Census ACS5 2023 (released December 2024) for rent, owner cost, and home value; the 2022 NAIC Annual Report tables for HO-3 and HO-4 insurance premiums; and the Women's Bureau 2018 National Database of Childcare Prices inflation-adjusted to 2023 for childcare. The vintage stamp on every page tile names the source date.
Built for renters, families, and planners.
Four use cases the tool is engineered to support — with the same evidence that drives them.
Two-county comparator
Pin two counties side by side. The comparator surfaces the rent gap, the mortgage gap, the insurance gap, and the childcare gap in a single view — useful when the move is real and the budget needs to be defended to a partner or a finance reviewer.
ZIP-code lookup
Enter a ZIP code; the tool maps it to its county using the Census ZCTA-to-county relationship file and returns the monthly nut. Thirty-three thousand seven hundred ninety-one mapped ZIPs — close to the full continental U.S.
Family-of-four budgeting
The DOL National Database of Childcare Prices publishes county-level center-based, family-home, infant, and school-age prices. Pair them with the rent and owner-cost numbers and you have a workable monthly fixed-cost forecast.
HR and relocation desks
Setting a geographic differential, scoping a relocation package, or building a cost-of-living memo for a senior hire — the TSCI gives the county-level shelter nut in a defensible source-cited form, with every flag documented.
Four moves to get the answer you came for.
The tool is designed to work without a manual. These four moves cover the bulk of how people use it.
Search a ZIP
Type a ZIP code into the search field. The tool maps it to its county and surfaces the four monthly cost domains plus the composite burden numbers.
Color the map
Use the domain toggle to color the choropleth by rent, owner cost, insurance, childcare, or the composite burden percentage.
Pin two counties
Click one county to pin it, click a second to load the side-by-side comparator. The deltas surface in a single panel.
Read the flag
Every tile carries a provenance flag. LIVE = direct ACS5 / DOL / NAIC value. STATE-FLAT = state value inherited because the source series does not publish at the county grain.
NAIC publishes HO-3 (homeowner) and HO-4 (renter) premiums at the state level only. The TSCI inherits the state value to every county in the state and flags it. That keeps the read honest — a rural Mississippi county will show the same HO-3 premium as Jackson, because that is what the published source supports.
True Shelter and Family Cost Index — interactive map.
The publication build loads inline. The full-screen button below opens it in a dedicated tab.
The publication build is a large single-file bundle. Some shared hosts cap inline file sizes — if you see a blank frame, use the full-screen link above. Same data, same controls, same vintage stamps.
Every domain, attributed.
Five federal and regulator sources. Live where the series publishes at county grain; documented state inheritance where it does not. The methodology one-pager linked below is the print-ready summary.
| Source | What it provides | Flag class |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates 2023 (B25064) |
Median gross rent at county grain — D1 Rent baseline | LIVE · County |
| U.S. Census Bureau ACS5 2023 (B25077, B25088, B19013) |
Median home value, owner cost with mortgage, median household income — D2 Mortgage and burden ratios | LIVE · County |
| National Association of Insurance Commissioners 2022 Annual Report |
HO-3 (homeowner) and HO-4 (renter) average annual premiums — D3 Insurance | STATE → COUNTY |
| U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau NDCP 2018 (inflation-adj) |
Center-based, family-home, infant, and school-age childcare prices — D4 Childcare | LIVE · County |
| U.S. Census Bureau ZCTA-to-County Relationship 2020 |
Crosswalk between 33,791 ZIP code tabulation areas and counties — ZIP search index | LIVE · ZIP ↔ County |
| us-atlas v3 (Mike Bostock, ISC) | Pre-projected Albers USA TopoJSON for state and county geometry — from Census TIGER/Line | Geometry |
| BLS CPI metro definitions | 21 metro outline overlays — visual context for the largest CPI-tracked urban areas | Overlay |
About the burden formulas
Owner monthly nut: owner_nut = owner_cost + childcare_monthly + (HO-3 / 12). Owner burden: (owner_nut × 12) / median_HH_income. Renter burden: (median_rent × 12) / median_HH_income. Price-to-income ratio: median_home_value / median_HH_income. Every formula and every input cell is documented inside the tool's methodology panel and in the audit workbook.
Eight states (AR, CT, IN, MO, NM, PA, VT, plus Puerto Rico) carry a proxy flag for one or more DOL NDCP childcare slots because the source release did not publish the slot at the requested county grain. NAIC HO-3 and HO-4 are state-only and inherit flat to every county in the state. These are documented constraints, not modeling shortcuts — the audit workbook names every cell.
Download and further reading.
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TSCI Audit Workbook (.xlsx)The full provenance trace: Day_Log of every change, Bundle_Requests, Flag_Taxonomy, county-by-county source citations, and the ZIP-to-county crosswalk. Use this if you want to verify a single value back to its source cell.Download .xlsx
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Methodology one-pager (HTML / print)A printable one-page reference covering both TCBI and TSCI: federal data identifiers, the core formulas, the provenance flag taxonomy, the vintage timeline, and the documented known constraints.Open One-Pager
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Open the tool full-screenThe full publication build in its own tab — useful for sharing a direct link or working without the page chrome. Same data, same controls, same provenance flags.Open Full-Screen
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Sister tool — True Cost Basket IndexThe weekly household basket counterpart: gas, pantry, plate, restaurant, composite. Tract resolution inside fifteen mega-counties and 262 NYC NTAs.Read TCBI Case Study
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Veteran Livability IndexThe county-level decision tool for veteran outcomes: six metric overlays, the VA disability purchasing-power calculator, 3,222 counties.Open VLI
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Analytics portfolioThe full set of shipped deliverables — case studies, dashboards, model cards, process improvement work.Back to Analytics
Built to be used, not to be admired.
The fixed monthly nut is the line item most household budgets get wrong, because the national reporting averages a country with a wide spread into one number. The TSCI is one attempt to fix that. The data is federal public domain. The methodology is disclosed. If you find a value that looks wrong, a state inheritance that distorts the read, or a use case the layout does not support — tell me. The next vintage will be better for it.