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How The Affordable Rental Housing Crisis Is Hurting Hispanics – OpEd
Policies to provide affordable rental housing have been inadequate since the 1960s, and they have only gotten worse in recent years. Policy analysts consider households paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing to be cost-burdened.
In other words, these households need affordable housing but are not able to find it. In 2001, the Joint Center for Housing Studies reports, 40.6 percent of renters were cost-burdened (see Excel Data tables). Two decades later, in 2022, 49.6 percent of renters were cost-burdened. The need for affordable rental housing continues to grow.
The Hispanic population, being disproportionately lower-income, has an even higher cost-burdened rate. In 2022, the Joint Center for Housing Studies reports, 53.8 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened.
In some of the states with the largest Hispanic populations, the rates were even higher. In California, the state with the most Hispanics, 56.3 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened (Figure). In Florida, the state with the third largest number of Hispanics, 60.4 percent of Hispanic renters were cost-burdened.
The lack of affordable housing causes additional housing problems for the Hispanic population. Ten percent of Hispanic renter households live in substandard housing. This housing has significant maintenance needs including problems with hot and cold running water, heat, and electricity. Hispanic people are alsooverrepresented in the unhoused population.
Our current strategy for creating affordable rental housing relies primarily on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). LIHTC was designed primarily to meet the needs of wealthy investors, not the need for affordable housing. Because of this design priority, “LIHTC does not necessarily protect a renter from cost burdens,” and “LIHTC units often require additional subsidies to make this housing affordable.” Policymakers need to make significant investments in affordable rental housing rather than constantly finding new ways to help make the rich richer as they did in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- This article was published by CEPR
Algernon Austin
Algernon Austin is the Director for Race and Economic Justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Algernon Austin has conducted research and writing on issues of race and racial inequality for over 20 years. His primary focus has been on the intersection of race and the economy. Austin was the first Director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy where he focused on the labor market condition of America’s workers of color. He has also done work on racial wealth inequality for the Center for Global Policy Solutions and for the Dēmos think tank. At the Thurgood Marshall Institute, the think tank of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., he worked on issues related to race, the economy, and civil rights.
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