A recent article in Nature Cities, “Urban Inequality, the Housing Crisis, and Deteriorating Water Access in US Cities,” discusses how ongoing systemic inequities continue to impede hundreds of thousands of U.S. households from having complete access to running water. The authors analyzed data on household water access in the fifty largest U.S. cities over a period of several decades, finding that “plumbing poverty,” which they define as households having incomplete access to running water, worsened across many cities following the 2008 financial crisis, particularly among households of color.
To assess these trends, the authors used microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Decennial Census, as well as from the American Community Survey’s (ACS) integrated public use microdata sample. The microdata provides information on individual households’ access to running water and the racial/ethnic identities of their occupants. They examined these data for the fifty largest cities throughout the study period. Access to running water was defined as having what the Census Bureau refers to as “complete plumbing” within the housing unit, meaning both hot and cold running water and a bathtub or shower. The authors estimated income inequality ratios and the shares of White and non-White people without access to running water across the fifty cities over time.
Though the number of households without running water has declined by nearly 3 million since 1970, the authors found that these numbers increased slightly following recent economic crises. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the number of households without access to running water increased by 65% from the prior year to more than 780,000. Between 2019 (the year prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2022, there was a 15% increase in the number of households experiencing pluming poverty. The authors posit that these crises further exacerbated the “systemic, compounding pressures” such as unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, and rising utility costs that many households, especially low-income and renter households, already face. As a result, these households may be forced to downgrade to less expensive, lower quality housing, including into conditions of plumbing poverty.
In 2021, more than half a million households (with more than 1.1 million people) lacked running water, 71.7% of which were located in urban areas, reflecting the increasing urbanization of plumbing poverty since the 1990s. The authors found that people of color have been disproportionately affected, with non-White individuals making up the majority of those without running water in 12 of the 15 largest U.S. cities. Between 2017 and 2021, people of color accounted for 40% of Philadelphia’s population but 66% of the city’s individuals without access to running water – a disparity rate of 26%, higher than any other city studied. Other cities with high disparity rates included Phoenix (23%), Detroit (22%), and Boston (15%).
In a case study of Portland, Oregon, the authors demonstrate how rising housing costs, gentrification, and a lack of affordable housing options following the 2008 financial crisis contributed to a 56% increase in the number of households experiencing plumbing poverty since 2000, the greatest increase for any U.S. city. During this period, the number of households of color without access to running water increased by more than 260%. The authors also note that renter households in Portland have been especially squeezed, with median rents increasing at a rate three times higher than wages between 2012 and 2022.
The authors note that their findings likely underestimate the number of households experiencing plumbing poverty due to the limitations of using Census data – namely, that Census data collection efforts often undercount the vulnerable populations most likely to experience plumbing poverty, or exclude them altogether (e.g., people experiencing homelessness). They also stress that Census data does not gather information on the causes or duration of plumbing poverty, neither distinguishing between temporary or permanent lack of access nor whether the problem is situational (e.g., inability to pay for utilities) or infrastructural in nature. The authors emphasize the need for improved data collection and further research on households without complete water access in urban areas, particularly for non-White residents. They call for targeted policy reforms that improve housing availability and affordability, issues directly connected to water access.
Read “Urban Inequality, the Housing Crisis, and Deteriorating Water Access in US Cities” at: https://bit.ly/40HnjD9