RE: Time is Running Out to Make Your Voice Heard - 19

The issue is not school data or that there are school age children in the unit for a households with an income below poverty.

The issue for affordable housing planning is about college age adults who show no income and are heads of households, adult members of households or part of non-traditional households. Another issue is that while in school showing no income skews poverty statistics. A female individual of color with no income who is a student at an Ivy League Law School, but is also a divorced parent, is not someone who you want to mistake for a single female head of household of color living below poverty.

The housing issues for the two women as heads of household are very different and the AHS gives essentially no clues to the difference since based in income, race and household composition as they would appear almost identical, if not identical.

Also the issue of school debt (college loans) would also now seem relevant to housing; inability to assume additional debt and amount of annual income required to service school debt impact housing choice. A head of households may have an income above poverty and got there through college or graduate school education only to be stymied by a large debt burden. This already seems to have been established as a demographic issue for the Millennials and why HO levels are dropping or even when HO is possible, a preference for renting and for mobility.

Andrew Daniels

MAPPLAN Partners, Inc.
P.O. Box 1701
New Haven, CT 06507
203 787-5720
203 787-5719 Fax
Daniels@mapplan.com