Improved Housing Standards Shutting the Door on the Poor?
Below is an excerpt from an interesting read which is also linked below. The gist is that governmental efforts to regulate, and presumably improve, low income housing, have made such housing unaffordable for low income tenants. While it is hard to argue against safer housing, out of control municipal regulations, fines, and fees have almost certainly hurt the low-income populations such policies are ostensibly designed to protect. I made the mistake early in my career of buying a building in a D area and have seen this firsthand. You definitely do not want to rent to low income tenants (in highly regulated areas) if they are not receiving some form of housing assistance. Too many will not be able to meet their obligations long term and evictions suck for everyone involved. As noted below though, such assistance is increasingly only available to a lucky few. So, what is the solution?
Into the 1970s, low-income housing, though often squalid, generally didn’t squeeze budgets. The wind whipped through the tar-paper shacks, but the shacks were abundant and cheap. Demolition and gentrification claimed the cheap units, and sputtering incomes swelled the number of needy renters.
As a nation, we appear to have upgraded our notions of what constitutes acceptable housing without figuring out how to make this housing affordable to poor people. In 1970, according to a 1998 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, there were 6.5 million low-cost ($469 or less a month in current dollars) rental units and 6.2 million low-income ($18,750 or less a year in current dollars) renters. By 1995 it was 6.1 million low-cost rental units and 10.5 million low-income renters. I couldn’t find exactly comparable data for today, but in 2013, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there were 10.3 million households classified as “extremely low income” (incomes at or less than 30 percent of the area median) and 5.8 million rental units they could afford (that is, with housing and utility costs amounting to 30 percent or less of the threshold income).
Some people do get help with the rent. About a quarter of eligible low-income households receive federal housing assistance. Local programs such as rent control and requirements that developers include affordable housing in their projects help others, but I couldn’t find any national numbers on this and doubt that they’re very big. Overall, housing assistance is only for a lucky minority.
