The Crisis in Low-Income Housing

I wish to address today what I think can only be termed a growing crisis-the increasing lack of lowand moderate-income rental housing. In the past, housing for lower income Americans was viewed as a problem of quality. Today there is growing alarm that low-cost housing is simply not available in many places for many of our citizens. After outlining current problems and dilemmas, I will present evidence of even more ominous long-term trends and suggest some ways to meet these problems. Let me open by providing a brief snapshot of our national lowincome housing dilemma, taken from information set forth in the report of the National Housing Task Force: * As of 1986, approximately one in seven Americans, or 32 million persons, were living below the poverty level ($11,203 for a family of four, $5,572 for individuals); * Lower income Americans are predominantly renters. Of the 32 million poor Americans, 63 percent are renters; in the poverty group, there were 12.9 million rental households in 1983, the last year for which reasonable data exists; * The poor pay a disproportionate amount of their income in rent; almost 6 million households were paying more than 50 percent of their incomes for rent; * The supply of low-income housing is shrinking; from 1976 to 1983, approximately 4.5 million units were demolished, converted, or otherwise lost as rental units; roughly half of those units were occupied by lower income groups; in roughly the same time period, 1976-1982, only 1 million new units of lowand moderate-income housing were provided. (In other words, during a period when federal programs for housing were in full operation, the United

Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Low income housing · Housing Market and Economics · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies