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Affordable Housing Needs: A Report to Congress on the Significant Need for Housing

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Report Acceptance Date: December 2005 (103 pages)

Posted Date: January 22, 2006



In 1990, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee directed HUD to "resume the annual compilation of a worst case housing needs survey of the United States ... [to estimate] the number of families and individuals whose incomes fall 50 percent below an area's median income, who either pay 50 percent or more of their monthly income for rent, or who live in substandard housing."

Households with "worst case needs" are defined as unassisted renters with very low incomes (below 50 percent of area median income - AMI) who pay more than half of their income for housing or live in severely substandard housing.

This report is the ninth in a series of Worst Case Needs reports to Congress. The report is organized into four basic sections. Chapter 1 provides an introduction, including a discussion of terms and sources. Chapter 2 outlines the findings of worst case needs by various categories such as demographics and geography. Chapter 3 presents a new analysis using data from the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation to compare estimates of severe rent burden and examine the duration of those rent burdens. Chapter 4 assesses the supply of affordable rental housing.

In addition to examining the experiences of renters, their incomes and the amounts they pay in rent, this report also looks at the availability of affordable rental housing and how these supply issues may affect worst case needs.

The 2003 Worst Case Needs Tables are available here. This archive contains the appendix tables of the report in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format. PD&R provides these tables as a convenience to analysts who wish to use the tabulations in their own work.


This report is part of the collection of Affordable Housing & Worst Case Needs Reports to Congress.


 


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