New Article: The Gap–A Shortage of Affordable Homes, National Low Income Housing Coalition (March 2023). Excerpt of Introduction:
The past three years – characterized by a global pandemic, widespread job losses, record-breaking inflation, unusually low vacancy rates, and skyrocketing rental prices – have underlined and exacerbated the financial precarity experienced by the nation’s lowest-income renters. Between January 2021 and December 2022, rental prices increased 22% nationally (Apartment List, 2022). These rent increases occurred across the country and were not confined to certain markets. As prices increased precipitously, the supply of rental housing affordable to extremely low- and very low-income renters declined by more than one million units, continuing a long-term trend of a diminishing supply (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022b & 2020; Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2022; Hermann, 2020). Meanwhile, rental vacancy rates reached their lowest point in nearly four decades. With only 5.6% of rental units vacant at the end of 2021, renters’ choices about where to live became more and more limited (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). Despite small improvements, the average vacancy rate in 2022 was 5.8%, a level not seen since the 1980s (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023).
These trends are reflected in NLIHC’s most recent analysis of affordable and available rental homes for various income groups. Each year, NLIHC uses American Community Survey (ACS) data to estimate how many affordable rental homes are available to extremely low-income households – those with incomes at or below the federal poverty guideline or 30% of AMI, whichever is greater – and other income groups (Box 1). Affordable homes are those with rents that do not exceed 30% of a given income threshold. Homes are affordable and available for a specific income group if they are affordable and are either vacant or not occupied by a higher-income household. The Gap report provides 2 Similar analyses, based on a different dataset, are available for every county, city, and town in the U.S. and can be acquired by contacting research@nlihc.org. estimates of affordable housing needs in the U.S., including in each state, the District of Columbia (D.C.), and the 50 largest metropolitan areas.
Poverty Law 