Page 14 - THE GAP: The Affordable Housing Gap Analysis 2019

THE GAP provide them adequate income to a ord housing. e national average of what a full-time worker, working 40 hours per week for 52 weeks of the year, needs to earn to a ord a modest one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment is $17.90 or $22.10 per hour, respectively (NLIHC, 2018d). Low-wage employment will continue to grow. Seven of the ten occupations projected to add the most jobs over the next decade, including medical assistants, home health aides, janitors, and food servers, provide a lower median wage than what is needed to a ord modest rental housing (NLIHC, 2018d). Fifteen percent of extremely low-income renters are single-adult caregivers of a young child or of a household member with a disability. More than half (53%) of these caregivers also participate in the labor market. More than one-quarter of these caregivers work full-time and another one-quarter usually work between 20 and 39 hours per week. Without housing assistance or an increase in their hourly wage, they cannot rely on their work hours to a ord their homes. RACIAL DISPARITIES AND EXTREMELY LOW-INCOME RENTERS Black, Native American, and Hispanic households are more likely than white households to be extremely low-income renters. Twenty percent of black households, 18% of American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) households, and 16% of Hispanic households are extremely low-income renters. Six percent of white non-Hispanic households are extremely low-income renters. is racial disparity is the result of higher homeownership rates and higher incomes among white households. Decades of racial discrimination in real estate, lending practices, and federal housing policy have made homeownership di cult to obtain for minorities (Rice & Swesnik, 2012). While overt discrimination was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act, today’s credit scoring system and lending practices continue as barriers to minority homeownership (Rice & Swesnik, 2012; Bartlett, 10 A SHORTAGE OF AFFORDABLE HOMES, 2019 Morse, Stanton, & Wallace, 2018). Racial disparities in income are the result of historical and current discrimination, and di erences in educational attainment and wage and employment rates, among other factors. Blacks continue to have lower rates of upward mobility than whites (Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter, 2018). In 2016, the median black and Hispanic worker earned 65% and 63% of the median white worker, respectively. e lowest- income black and Hispanic workers earned 54% and 66% of the lowest-income white workers, respectively (Kochhar & Cillu o, 2018). Black, Native American, and Hispanic households are more likely than white households to be extremely low-income renters Racial disparities also exist among renters alone. irty-eight percent of AIAN renter households, 35% of black renter households, and 28% of Hispanic renter households have extremely low incomes, compared to 22% of white non-Hispanic households (Figure 9). Regardless of race, the majority of extremely low-income renters are severely housing cost-burdened: 71.5% of Hispanic, 70.9% of non-Hispanic black, and 69.6% of non- Hispanic white extremely low-income renters are severely cost-burdened. Sixty-three percent of AIAN extremely low-income renters are severely housing cost-burdened, but poor housing conditions like low quality and overcrowding are also signi cant concerns in tribal areas (Pindus et al., 2017). White renters are more likely than non-Hispanic black, Hispanic, and AIAN renters to have household incomes greater than 80% of AMI. At the same time, white renters (1.1%) with these higher incomes are more likely to be severely housing cost-burdened than Hispanic renters (0.6%), non-Hispanic black renters (0.3%) and AIAN renters (0.1%) with similar incomes. As a NATIONAL LOW INCOME HOUSING COALITION