Shelter Poverty: The Chronic Crisis of Housing Affordability

This paper examines housing affordability in the United States over the past three decades using the author’s concept of “shelter poverty.” The major findings are as follows: The number of shelter-poor households has been over 30 million since the early 1990s, an increase of more than 70 percent since 1970. Among families with children, rates of shelter poverty are much higher, and over the past several decades have risen faster, than among households with just one or two persons. Nearly half of all renter households are shelter-poor, victims of low incomes and rising rents; most low-income renters are headed by a woman and/or a person of color; nearly a quarter of homeowner households are shelter-poor; most are single-parent families or elderly. Shelter affordability problems have increased more for renters than for homeowners; more than half of the increase in shelter poverty since 1970 has been among the one-third of all households who are renters. Households headed by a person of color have about a 25 percent higher rate of shelter poverty than renter households headed by a white person, with a smaller but still significant racial gap among homeowners. More than half of all shelter-poor renter households are headed by a woman, and two out of five shelter-poor homeowner households are headed by a woman. Shelter-poor elders are predominantly very poor women living alone, renters and homeowners; elderly married couples, by contrast, have relatively low rates of shelter poverty

Latino Shelter Poverty in Massachusetts

There were about 121,000 Latino-headed households in Massachusetts in 2000 – nearly 5% of all households, an increase from 3.5% in 1990. The median annual income for Latino-headed households was $27,400 in 2000. About one-third of Latino households had annual incomes of less than$15,000; one-third had between $15,000 and 40,000; and one-third had incomes of$40,000 or more. The median Latino household size was 3 persons. 78% of Latino-headed households rented housing, and only 22% were homeowners

Housing Affordability: One-Third of a Nation Shelter-Poor

The chapter examines the housing affordability problem in the U.S. through the lens of the shelter poverty concept. Shelter poverty challenges the conventional view that a household can reasonably afford up to a certain percent of income -- currently thirty percent -- for housing without hardship. It offers instead a sliding scale that takes into account differences in household composition and income in determining how much reasonably can be afforded for housing without compromising non-shelter necessities. Following a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues around housing affordability, the chapter summarizes the contours of housing affordability in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century, as well as trend since the 1970s

Shelter Poverty in Massachusetts, 2000-2007: An Overview

Nearly half of all renter households in Massachusetts - 415,000 households - are shelter poor. After paying for their housing, they do not have enough resources left to meet their non-shelter needs for food, clothing, medical care, transportation, etc., at even a minimal level of adequacy. The median income of these shelter poor renters in Massachusetts is only $14,000 a year. This is just 16 percent of the median family income for Metro Boston (AMI). Shelter poverty is a more realistic approach to assessing affordability than the conventional 30 percent of income standard because it takes into account the cost of non-shelter necessities and taxes in Massachusetts for households of various sizes and types

Unaffordable “Affordable” Housing: Challenging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Area Median Income

There is no such thing as “affordable” housing. Affordability is not a characteristic of housing: It is a relationship between housing and people. For some people, all housing is affordable, no matter how expensive. For others, no housing is affordable, no matter how cheap

Pernicious Problems of Housing Finance

This article traces the evolution of the housing finance system in the U.S., with particular attention to changes from the 1960s through the early 2000s. The paper shows the trends to increasing risk taking by lenders and households, predicting the collapse of the mortgage system in the mid 2000s

Shelter Poverty in Boston: Problem and Program

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall economy, with resultant impact on Boston\u27s budget, employment, and other vital areas, as weil as its housing market. The principal policy implications which follow from the analysis are, correspondingly, of three types. First, housing policies—at the local as well as at the state and national levels—must be coupled with and include policies for increasing and redistributing income. Second, housing policies must be formulated with explicit recognition of and attention to their potential to affect the quality of life far beyond just the goal of providing more affordable shelter for the residents. Third, there can be no solution to the housing affordability problem without a solution to the broader political and economic crisis, but at the same time there can be no solution to the broader problems that does not deal with the roots of the housing crisis. The housing affordabiiity problem in Boston is examined quantitatively through the lens of a concept called shelter poverty —a sliding scale of affordabiiity based on the interaction among incomes, shelter costs, and non-shelter expenditures. It is demonstrated , using this concept, that a family of four in Boston would need an income of at least $23,000 to be able to afford the median-priced unsubsidized, two-bedroom apartment available in the city in 1983, while an elderly couple would need an income of nearly$12,000 to be able to afford the median-priced one-bedroom apartment. Nearly one-third of the households in Boston are shelter-poor, most of them renters and most with incomes of under $10,000 a year. A set of policy proposals are presented for beginning to deal in an appropriate way with the housing affordability problem in the city. While the structural changes required to truly solve the problem must occur nationally, local policies aimed at both the income and housing cost side of the problem can begin to make an impact in Boston while possibly serving as models for larger-scale reform. Because of fiscal constraints and continued skepticism about the efficacy of traditional spending programs, the proposed policies focus primarily on institutional change rather than major expenditures. They include suggestions for enhancing the income prospects and employment situations of lower-income Bostonians, as well as proposals for altering some aspecis of the structure and dynamics of the local housing market. Finally, it is argued that Boston—especially through its new city administration-has the potential to exercise great leadership and initiative nationally for a new understanding of the nature and causes of the housing problem, and thus for new kinds of policy directions for effectively addressing this profound problem of our city and our society

Shelter Poverty: Housing Affordability Among Asian Americans

Relatively little research has been conducted that focuses on the housing situation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (hereafter generally referred to as Asian Americans), especially on the national level. From a review of about 30 articles and reports over the past decade that examine racial/ethnic housing situations nationally, only one specifically addressed housing problems of Asian Americans (Hansen, 1986) while two others included Asian Americans along with other populations of color. Of the remaining articles, most used the terms race, racial discrimination, or segregation in their titles, yet did not include Asian Americans in the studies. Of particular note, in 1989 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsored a large scale housing discrimination study conducted by the Urban Institute and Syracuse University. This study provided national estimates of the levels of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos. A similar large-scale HUD study in 1977 had examined housing discrimination only against Blacks. Perhaps the next HUD discrimination study (if the agency survives government reorganization attempts) will finally include Asian Americans. Most national research and policy reports on Asian Americans tend not to address their housing issues. For example, a recent U.S. Civil Rights Commission report (1992) discussed many significant issues facing Asian Americans, but not housing. Much of the research that has been conducted on the housing problems of Asian Americans has been at the local level, for example, Darden\u27s (1986) study of differential segregation of Blacks, Latinos, American Indians and Asians in Michigan metropolitan areas; Sagara and Kiang\u27s (1993) report on poverty in Boston\u27s Asian American community, which includes a section on housing focused mostly on density and living conditions; and Chung\u27s (1995) paper analyzing the evolving residential patterns of Asian Americans in eastern Massachusetts. Such studies are important and essential, especially given the diversity of the Asian American population and its geographical distribution, but for adequate policy and strategy development, an understanding of housing issues from a national perspective for the Asian American population as a whole is also needed. Of the researchers who have looked at Asian American housing nationally, Hansen (1986) focused primarily on homeownership, overcrowding and physical conditions, while others (Massey and Denton, 1987; Woolbright and Hartmann, 1987) examined segregation. Thus, the housing affordability situation of Asian Americans is a subject that has received little attention by researchers

Social Ownership

The chapter begins with an overview of the social dimensions of all housing. This is followed by a definition of the more particular concept of social ownership and explanation of how the housing tenure available to residents of socially owned housing differs from both conventional renting and conventional homeownership. The bulk of the chapter then examines the nature and scope of existing models of social ownership, grouped into two major categories: socially owned rental housing, consisting of public housing, nonprofit rental housing, and mutual housing associations; and nonspeculative homeownership, consisting of limited-equity cooperatives, ownership with community land trusts, and some resale-restricted individual ownership. The models are evaluated in terms of differences in the degree of social control. The chapter concludes with identification of various routes through which the amount of social housing can be increased in the US