Housing Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard - Miller-McCune
As the middle class sidles out of the houses it can no longer pay for, the migration is making it harder for the poorest renters to find a place.
Since the American housing crisis began five years ago, policymakers have devoted the bulk of their attention to the bubble’s most visible victims, homeowners who’ve lost their houses to foreclosure, or who look like they may any day now. This group has been the subject of congressional inquiries and legal settlements and numerous election-year speeches. Just this week, California’s attorney general has been pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive some of the debt owed by underwater homeowners.
Considerably less attention has gone to a population deeply impacted by the housing collapse, perhaps because they likely never owned a house in the first place. These are the most extreme low-income households who’ve always rented - and who are today squeezed by the fact that everyone else now wants to rent, too.
As more people have left their homes (or are afraid to buy new ones), rental occupancy rates are skyrocketing across the country. Rents are going up everywhere as housing prices stagnate. And this effectively means the supply of affordable rental housing is shrinking exactly when the number of families in need of it is growing.
THE IDEA LOBBY
Miller-McCune’s Washington correspondent Emily Badger follows the ideas informing, explaining and influencing government, from the local think tank circuit to academic research that shapes D.C. policy from afar.
“This is really the result of the housing boom and bust that caused the recession, so these things are kind of happening simultaneously,” said Megan Bolton, a senior research analyst at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “In the past, when you’ve had high poverty or high unemployment, you’ve often also had declining prices across the board in the entire housing market.”