Isn't it interesting that the housing crisis for poor folk has been going on for decades! [View All]

[bobbolink]

Yet, now the muddleclass is experiencing a problem, and now it's a national crisis.

It's really fun to be so invisible.

"A lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs have contributed to the current housing crisis and to homelessness. The gap between the number of affordable housing units and the number of people needing them has created a housing crisis for poor people. Between 1973 and 1993, 2.2 million low-rent units disappeared from the market. These units were either abandoned, converted into condominiums or expensive apartments, or became unaffordable because of cost increases. Between 1991 and 1995, median rental costs paid by low-income renters rose 21%; at the same time, the number of low-income renters increased. Over these years, despite an improving economy, the affordable housing gap grew by one million. Between 1970 and 1995, the gap between the number of low-income renters and the amount of affordable housing units skyrocketed from a nonexistent gap to a shortage of 4.4 million affordable housing units--the largest shortfall on record.

"The lack of affordable housing has led to high rent burdens (rents which absorb a high proportion of income), overcrowding, and substandard housing. These phenomena, in turn, have not only forced many people to become homeless they have put a large and growing number of people at risk of becoming homeless. A recent Housing and Urban Development (HUD)study found that 4.9 million unassisted, very low-income households -- this is 10.9 million people, 3.6 million of whom are children--had "worst case needs" for housing assistance in 1999. Although this figure seems to be a decrease from 1997, it is misleading since, in the same two-year span, "he number of units affordable to extremely low-income renters dropped between 1997 and 1999 at an accelerated rate, and the shortage of housing both affordable and available to these renters actually worsened."

"From 1996 to 1998, the time households spent on waiting lists for HUD housing assistance grew dramatically. For the largest public housing authorities, a family's average time on a waiting list rose from 22 to 33 months from 1996 to 1998--a 50% increase. The average waiting period for a Section 8 rental assistance voucher rose from 26 months to 28 months between 1996 and 1998."

That is TEN YEARS AGO. It certainly hasn't improved.. it's only much worse.

Can someone please tell me WHY this housing crisis isn't important??