While most would agree that poverty thresholds in New York City should be higher than poverty thresholds in rural Alabama, there is much less consensus on the issue of how these differences in the cost of living should be reflected in the thresholds for the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).  Currently, the SPM thresholds produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are adjusted by the Census Bureau for differences in the cost of rent and utilities using an index developed using data from the American Community Survey (ACS).  This index is applied to the shelter portion of the threshold and does not take into consideration differences in amenities across jurisdictions.  This paper suggests an approach that would take into account these amenities.