National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

Rental Housing Assistance at a Crossroads:
A Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs

Findings

The report's findings document the continuing failure of this country to adequately house its people. In analyzing the collected data, the report revealed the following disturbing trends.

Worst case housing needs faced by 5.3 million households. A record and growing number of people — reaching an all-time high of 5.3 million households as of 1993 — face worst-case housing needs.² These households pay more than half of their income for rent and/or live in severely inadequate housing. Families with children are often most acutely affected. Hispanics and residents of the western United States were found to be relatively underserved by federal housing assistance. The number of households facing worst-case housing needs continues to grow, and this trend seems unaffected by periods of economic expansion.

Worst case housing needs are concentrated at the lowest income levels. Not surprisingly, the concentration of people with the most acute housing needs are those with the very lowest incomes. Sheer poverty accounted for almost 95 percent of the households with worst-case housing needs. Over three-quarters of these households had incomes below 30 percent of area median. This represents a large shift of renter households slipping into the extremely low-income category. Poor housing quality appeared to be less of a factor for households with worst case needs, with fewer than 9 percent of these believed to be living in severely inadequate housing.

Acute housing needs remain high among elderly people and people with disabilities. Despite successful efforts to provide these groups with housing assistance, the need remains acute for a large number of households headed by an elderly person or person with a disability.

Many households with worst-case housing needs are working families, often with children. Although over a million working households receive federal rental assistance, an even larger number of working poor renters face acute housing needs and receive no assistance.

Despite the large and growing need, housing markets are not producing units affordable to the lowest income renters. In 1993, for example, there were 1.7 million fewer units affordable to the poorest households than there were households in this category. Between 1985 and 1993, the private market stock of extremely low-rent units fell by a fifth (almost 500,000 units).

Policy Implications

Federal housing assistance policy is at a crossroads. Despite the disturbing findings of the large and growing number of people who facing acute housing needs, Congress has begun to dismantle the existing federal housing programs and is considering additional changes that would reduce the overall number of affordable units and loosen targeting requirements to permit more higher income households to access what federal housing assistance remains.

The report makes the following overall recommendations:

• The federal government must expand rental assistance, especially incremental assistance to working poor families and those in transition from welfare to work.
• Income targeting must continue to ensure that households with worst-case needs are served.
• Federal programs that supply affordable housing (such as HOME and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit programs) must be supplemented by increased tenant-based rental assistance, particularly for the lowest income households.

The findings of this report are extremely important to low-income housing advocates and others working to ensure that the beginnings of a trend away from meeting the housing needs of this country's poorest families do not take root. Policymakers, including the author HUD, should take heed when addressing current proposals to repeal rent limits, reduce deep subsidies, or lessen income targeting for public housing and Section 8 programs.

Copies of this report should be obtained directly from HUD (see n. 1, supra, for ordering details).

1. HUD, Rental Housing Assistance at a Crossroads: A Report to Congress on Worst Case Housing Needs (Mar. 1996) (available from HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research, Washington, DC 20410-6000, for $5.00).
2. Ironically, this figure does not include homeless people, because the American Housing Survey counts only persons living in housing units.