The differences in median gross rent among states and between metro and non-metro areas validates what other studies and the NAS panel found about the disparities in costs of housing. Comparing housing cost indexes for metro areas, both methods (the ACS and HUD FMR) have produced similar “ranking” order among the states. For most states with lower median state housing costs, ACS exhibited higher metro index values than the FMR method. On the contrary, FMR produced higher metro indexes than the ACS method for most states with higher median state housing costs.  States with lower metro housing cost indexes have lower adjusted percentages of people in poverty than the official rate, in contrast to the states with higher metro housing cost indexes. The ACS method has shown less disparity in estimated poverty rates among the states as compared to the official estimate.