can be found in HUD’s “worst case needs”*
report. According to the most recent report,
the number of renters with “worst case
needs” stood at 7.7 million in 2013, growing
an astounding 49 percent since 2008.28
While stagnating
incomes and a
weak economy
have helped fuel
today’s rental
affordability crisis,
a major contributing
factor has been the
acute shortage of
rental homes that
are both affordable
and available to
those households
with the lowest
incomes.
Not surprisingly, rental cost burdens affect
those with the lowest incomes most acutely.
According to Harvard’s Joint Center for
Housing Studies, in 2012, more than four
out of five households with incomes below
$15,000 (the equivalent one would earn
working full-time at the federal minimum
wage) paid more than 30 percent of their
incomes for housing, while more than twothirds of these renters paid in excess of 50
percent.29 These cost burdens force many
low-income renters to forego purchasing nutritious food, health care, and other essentials in
order to ensure there are sufficient funds available to ^H H