Mapping the Rental Housing Crisis—County by County

A new map tool breaks down the availability of rental housing around the United States by county. While some markets are tighter than others, it’s impossible to find a place in the United States that has enough rental units per low-income households.

1 minute read

March 4, 2014, 10:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Writing for the Urban Institute’s MetroTrends blog, Graham MacDonald and Erika Poethig shares some analysis of the new map's presentation. Among the more concerning of the information found on the map: “For every 100 extremely low-income (ELI) renter households in the country, there are only 29 affordable and available rental units.” Moreover, the shortage of available rental units available for low-income households impacts every single corner of the country: “Not one county in the United States has an even balance between its ELI households and its affordable and available rental units.”

“This situation would be much worse without HUD rental assistance, which we estimate provides almost 3.2 million affordable and available units to ELI households.”

Monday, March 3, 2014 in Urban Institute: MetroTrends Blog

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