Despite availability, poor in US face housing crisis
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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Mathew Davis, who lives in a homeless shelter in Austin, Texas, would love an apartment of his own. But with the little money he makes donating blood plasma, even a $450-a-month tiny home with no running water and a communal bathroom would be a stretch.
Meanwhile, over 4,500 units the city classifies as affordable -- nearly 16% -- sit empty.
"I don't make enough money really to afford anything," Davis, 49, said of the few hundred dollars he earns a month. "I just keep trying to swim uphill."
The poorest people in the U.S. face the most acute shortages of affordable homes. But the majority of low-income housing financed in recent years is for those earning 50% of an area's median income or above, according to a survey of state housing agencies.
Some cities are now seeing an uptick in vacancies as rents for these units approach market rates. The result: Apartments designated as affordable sit empty because the poorest of the poor cannot afford them.
Meanwhile, some people are forced into homelessness and others into desperate circumstances to pay for housing they can't afford.
FEW OPTIONS FOR POOR
There are only about 4 million affordable rental units available for the country's 11 million extremely low-income renter households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's most recent annual report.
These are people with annual incomes either below the federal poverty guidelines -- just under $16,000 for a single-person household -- or 30% of the median income in their area, whichever is higher. They comprise about a quarter of U.S. renter households, and include many people working low-wage jobs, seniors and those with disabilities living on fixed incomes.
About three-quarters of extremely low-income renter households pay over half their income on rent and utilities, the report said, leaving little leftover for other necessities.
Yet homes set aside for these renters were only about 12% of the affordable housing units financed in 2024 by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit -- a federal program providing tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low for at least 30 years, according to figures from the National Council of State Housing Agencies.
The majority are for those earning at least 50% of an area's median income, or AMI. In Austin, that's a single person earning roughly $47,000 a year, as compared with an extremely low-income person earning under $28,000.
The program has financed nearly 4 million affordable units nationwide since its creation 40 years ago. But some experts say it's inefficient -- and more costly than housing vouchers.
"It's enormously complex and bureaucratic, and it raises the cost of construction enormously because the rules are so complicated," said Chris Edwards, an economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, who told Congress the program's complexity "spawned" an industry of law and accounting firms just to administer it.
"If you're going to subsidize affordable housing, you should give the money directly to tenants," he said, referring to housing vouchers.