A couple of weeks ago I posted about the affordable rental housing crisis in Tulsa. Today, I ran across an interesting report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, that looks at the problem at a national level. In addition to the section on rental affordability the report includes sections on the following: rental marketing conditions, renter demographics, rental housing stock, and policy challenges. I won’t summarize the entire report here, but I am going to highlight a few passages that really caught my eye.
One passage stood out to me from the report, “In 1960, 24 percent of renters were at least moderately burdened [30-50% of income spent on housing], including 12 percent that were severely burdened [more than 50% of income spent on housing]. By 2000, these shares had reached 38 percent and 20 percent. And by 2009, the share of at lease moderately cost-burdened renters soared to 49 percent while the share of severely burdened renters jumped to 26%.”
Another thing that caught my eye was that the affordability crisis is spreading to middle-income families. The report states that, “Between 2007 and 2009, 1.1 million more renters in the three middle-income quintiles faced at least moderate housing cost burdens. By 2009, more than half of lower-middle-income renters, spent at least 30 percent of income on rent and utilities.”
Similarly, the reports states that the affordability crisis, “have affected a growing fraction of the near-poor. Three-quarters of working-age households with income equivalent to the full-time minimum wage were severely housing cost-burdened in 2009, only slightly higher than in 2001 in inflation-adjusted terms.”
To read the entire report, click here.
To read our previous posts on the affordability crisis, click here
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