Poor Choices For Public Housing

Not a big surprise to those of us in Iowa City who have been beating the drum for more affordable housing, but it is important to recognize that affordable public housing is lagging nationally and people in need have few options.

From McClatchy Newspapers

Growing numbers of the nation's poorest households are using more than half their earnings for rent while waiting years for federal housing assistance that may never come.

The phenomenon is largely playing out in urban and suburban locales, but has exploded recently in rural areas as coveted rental assistance becomes harder to get due to high demand and scant funding from Congress.

The lack of affordable homes for poor families is the nation's No. 1 housing problem and undermines the stability and security of families and communities nationwide.

A new report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development describes the startling growth of the problem since 2003. It found that 6 million impoverished households used most of their monthly earnings for housing or lived in substandard conditions in 2005. That’s an increase of 16 percent, or 817,000 families, since 2003.

The number of rural families facing this dilemma grew by 51 percent to nearly 1 million households over the same two-year span.

At the same time, these struggling households saw their average monthly incomes decline while their average rent payments increased.

Despite the considerable squeeze and growing need for help, these 6 million families received no federal rent assistance from HUD. In fact, federal housing assistance reaches only about one in four income-eligible households.


There’s simply not enough to go around, in part because for many years the Bush administration and a compliant Congress have diverted money from housing and other domestic programs to pay for tax cuts and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.


“There definitely has been a diminution of federal support for low-income housing in recent years,” said Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. "Clearly, it says there are other priorities, and this is not on the short list."
The lack of assistance, soaring rents, slow wage growth and a shrinking inventory of affordable apartments have made it nearly impossible for millions of low-income renters to adequately house their families.


“If you’re not one of the lucky 25 percent to receive assistance, you're very likely to have a very high rent burden or live in substandard conditions or in overcrowded conditions," said Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities. ”The demand for assistance goes significantly unmet.”


In fact, a family with only one full-time minimum-wage earner can’t afford a standard two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country, the Harvard study found.

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