Nationwide, only 21 units are available per 100 extremely low-income renter households (those earning below 30 percent of the area median income) without government assistance. With assistance, it’s 46.
UI has also created a neat interactive map, which is an update from a previous version. It lets users explore the gap between the demand and supply of affordable units in every single U.S. county. (The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a similar report for states and metros this year, based 2015 one-year American Community Survey data. The UI report is based on 2010-2014 five-year estimates, which is better for a county-level analysis.) The UI map also lets users toggle the impact of assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Here’s what the affordable housing deficit looks like in Hays County, Texas. (Urban Institute)
The map shows how much more severe the problem is in urban counties. Overall, they have 42 units per every 100 low-income renting household, compared to 62 among rural counties. But in a blog post, the UI researchers note that while housing costs are lower in the countryside, so are incomes. And poverty rates are higher.
Urban areas are going to get the most attention with this issue since they have more people looking for housing, more government aid, more media, and more developers and builders interested in constructing housing units there. But, if affordable housing is difficult to supply there, how much harder must it be to supply it in more rural areas?
It would be interesting to think about how a lack of affordable housing in rural areas might contribute to affordable housing issues in urban centers. In other words, people who can’t find reasonable housing in rural areas might move to urban areas where they are more housing options but this could also exacerbate existing urban housing issues.
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