Millions of working families, seniors, veterans, and those with disabilities need affordable housing now more than ever.
Recent industry reports have detailed the demand, the cost, and the supply of affordable housing available for these households.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC’s) annual Out of Reach report shines a light on the mismatch between households’ wages and their housing costs. Its latest report, in May, detailed that a worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work nearly three full-time jobs, or approximately 112 hours per week every week of the year, to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment.
“We find there is no place in America—no state, no county, no jurisdiction—where minimum-wage workers earn enough for that decent, affordable two-bedroom apartment,” says Diane Yentel, NLIHC’s president and CEO.
This condition has contributed to the record number of households facing high housing cost burdens. According to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ 2016 State of the Nation’s Housing report, released in June, the number of cost-burdened renters (those who pay more than 30% of their income for housing) broke another record in 2014, jumping to 21.3 million from 20.8 million in 2013 (see graph). More than half of these renters, 11.4 million households, are considered severely cost burdened, paying more than 50% of their income for rent.
The number of very low-income households eligible for federal rental housing assistance increased by 3.8 million from 1993 to 2013, but the number of assisted renters grew by only 532,000 during this same period. This discrepancy takes a toll on households with severe cost burdens. Having little left over to make ends meet, they spend less on food, health care, and transportation.
The nation also continues to have a significant shortage of affordable and available units for the lowest-income households. According to the NLIHC’s The Gap: The Affordable Housing Gap Analysis 2016, of the nearly 43.2 million renter households in the nation, 10.4 million are considered extremely low-income, meaning they earn 30% or less of the area median income (AMI). Of those households, 4.1 million are considered deeply low-income, earning at or below 15% of the AMI.
The nation has 5.8 million affordable housing rental units for extremely low-income households. Even though that number itself isn’t enough to meet the need, the supply decreases even more when one considers that 2.6 million of those 5.8 million affordable units are being occupied by higher-income households, leaving only 3.2 million affordable and available rental units for extremely low-income households. This translates to 31 affordable and available rental units for every 100 extremely low-income households, or a shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available homes for extremely low-income families.
