information for practice

Nationally, from 1997 to 2005, the number of working families paying more than half their income for housing increased 87 percent, from 2.4 million to 4.5 million. Adding in families living in severely inadequate, or dilapidated, housing yields a total of 5.2 million working families with critical housing needs in 2005—an increase of some 73 percent over the 3 million families experiencing these problems in 1997. In the most recent two-year period from 2003 to 2005, however, the number of working families with critical housing needs grew only modestly from 5 million to 5.2 million households. While encouraging, one troubling sign is that virtually all of the increase was among renters. In fact, the number of renters paying more than half their income for housing rose 103 percent, from 1 million in 1997 to 2.1 million in 2005. Meanwhile, renters remain twice as likely as homeowners to live in inadequate housing or crowded conditions, and the number of non-working families with critical housing needs— many of whom are renters—climbed significantly between 2003 and 2005.