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Project: THE HOUSING LANDSCAPE FOR AMERICA'S WORKING FAMILIES: A NATIONAL AND METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVE

Sponsor: Center for Housing Policy
Status: Complete
IPS Staff: Sandra J. Newman and Marcella Sapun

Purpose and Approach
This is the latest in a continuing series of reports to be released by the Center for Housing Policy on the housing problems of “working families,” defined as those working the equivalent of a full-time job and earning at least the annual minimum wage but no more than 120 percent of the median income in their area. The goal of the series is to provide accessible and timely updates on the housing status of these families, and particularly the extent to which they face critical housing needs – that is, having to spend more than half of household income on housing, living in seriously
defective dwellings, or both. The study relies on both the national and metropolitan American Housing Surveys collected by the Census Bureau for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The national data pertain to the 1997-2005 period; the metropolitan area data cover 31 pairs of metros in the late-1990s and early-2000s.

Results
The total number of households with critical housing needs in the U.S. increased substantially between 2003 and 2005, from 14.3 to 17.5 million. Most of this increase was among non-working households – the retired elderly, and the younger unemployed – and may be due to large increases in the number of families in these categories. By contrast, the number of working families with critical needs grew only modestly over this two-year period.
Rates of critical housing needs vary widely across the 31 housing markets in this study, ranging from a high of 28 percent in Los Angeles to a low of 6 percent in Columbus, Ohio. Although the problem is most acute in California and hot East Coast markets around New York and Miami, significant numbers of working families in every housing market pay more than half of their income for housing. In most of the 31 markets studied, the share of working families with critical housing needs is very similar in both the central city and the suburbs.

Publications
Forthcoming.