The Silent Housing Crisis | Page 22

Endnotes 1 Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, State of the Nation’s Housing 2014 (2014), p. 27. A housing unit is generally considered “affordable” if monthly housing costs do not exceed 30 percent of income. 2 See Daniel McCue, The Burden of High Housing Costs, Cascade (No. 86, Winter 2015), Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. 13 Laurie Goodman and Rolf Pendall, Changing Demographics: Implications for the Housing Market, presentation to the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families, January 7, 2015, Table 4: Homeownership rates by race/ethnicity. 14 Rohit Chopra, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Student Debt Swells, Federal Loans Now Top a Trillion (July 17, 2013). 15 The Project on Student Loan Debt, Institute for College Access and Success, State by State Data, available here: http://projectonstudentdebt.org/ state_by_state-data.php. 16 National Association of Realtors, NAR Annual Survey Reveals Notable Decline in First-time Buyers (November 3, 2014), available here: http://www. realtor.org/news-releases/2014/11/nar-annualsurvey-reveals-notable-decline-in-first-time-buyers. 17 See Scott Stucky, Burden of Student Loans Stifles the Housing Market, American Banker (March 24, 2014). 18 Carmen DeNavas-Walt and Bernadette D. Proctor, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-249, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014, 7. 19 Ibid. at 5. 20 Judgment based on information contained in Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013, Table A-2; see also R.A., Stagnation for Everyone, The Economist (September 17, 2013), available here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/incomes. 21 Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2014 (2014), 3. 22 Ibid. at 15. A recent study by Fannie Mae shows that the homeownership rate even for “prime” first-time home-buying candidates (households with a median age ranging from 30 to 32, collegeeducated, with incomes exceeding $95,000 in 2012 dollars, and consisting of married couples with minor children) fell by 8.6 percentage points between the housing market peak in 2006 and 2012. Fannie Mae, Upper-Income, Educated, Married with Children, and Still Not Buying: Declining Homeownership among “Prime” First-Time Home Buying Candidates, Fannie Mae Housing Insights (August 18, 2014). In addition to student loan debt and tighter underwriting standards, the study suggests that lowered expectations about future income gains, fear of future job loss, and changing assessments of the future investment returns on homeownership have negatively impacted the homeownership rate among these “prime” first-time home-buying candidates. 3 Ibid. 4 5 6 See Housing Assistance Matters Initiative, Mapping America’s Rental Housing Crisis, Urban Institute (accessed on February 2, 2015), available here: http://www.urban.org/housingaffordability. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines an “extremely low-income household” as one making 30 percent or less of the area median income. In 2011, approximately 5 million out of a total of 27 million renter households with incomes below 80 percent of the area median income, the eligibility threshold for new admissions to rental assistance through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, reported receiving such assistance. See U.S. Census 'W&VR