Many low-income Americans can’t even afford to rent

(MarketWatch) The poorest Americans, who can’t afford to buy property, are increasingly priced out of rentals.

There were only 28 adequate and available to rent homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters in 2013, down from 37 in 2000, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that focuses on social and economic policy. “This gap between supply and demand leaves 72% of the country’s poorest families burdened by the high cost of housing,” it found. Extremely low-income renters are households with incomes at or below 30% of the median income in that region.

Not one county in the U.S. has enough affordable housing for all these renters. Among the 100 largest counties, the number of affordable rental homes ranges from eight per 100 in Denton County, Texas, to 51 in Suffolk County, Mass. This regional disparity is partly due to federal assistance not keeping pace with population growth, says Erika Poethig, a director at the Urban Institute. Only nine of the 100 largest counties increased the number of affordable units for extremely low-income renters from 2000 to 2013.

Between 2000 and 2013, the number of extreme low-income renter households soared 38% from 8.2 million to 11.3 million as the Great Recession pushed more families toward the lower end of the income bracket, the report found. Among the 100 largest counties, five of the 10 counties with the smallest affordability gap are in Massachusetts. Only one—San Francisco—is outside the Northeast. “The geography of poverty is changing and federal housing policy has not kept up,” Poethig says, because the cost of living is so high in these areas. ................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/many-low-income-americans-cant-even-afford-to-rent-2015-06-16