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Working families accounted for nearly one-third of the native-born households on the critical needs list, and more than half the foreign-born households. Moreover, because immigrants are more likely to settle in expensive areas — thriving cities where jobs are plentiful — they are also more likely to have incomes that are less than half of the median income in their area. Lipman also observed that immigrants with critical housing needs often aren’t newcomers. In fact, more than one-third of the 1.2 million immigrant working families with critical housing needs arrived in the U.S. between 1980 and 1989
An online database at the Center for Housing Policy provides information on workers in select occupations and what it costs them to live in certain cities compared to how much they earn. It is important to note, says Lipman, that the occupations that are expected to grow the most are “traditional jobs earning traditional wages.” This includes janitors, retail salespeople and food preparers. An increasingly substantial portion of the labor force, and hence, working families with critical housing needs, can be found in jobs such as these, few of which provide enough income to qualify for a mortgage. Similar analyses for the rental housing market are also available at the www.nhc.org Web site.
Home Prices Growing Faster Than Salaries
 Hardly a new problem in the United States, housing affordability remains most severe among the nation’s lowest-income families, said Nic Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “What has changed is the proportion of moderate-income people for whom housing affordability is a big issue.”
With all the uncertainties about workforce housing, one thing we know, said Retsinas, is that the problem isn’t going to go away — not by itself, and not anytime soon. “The market is not going to self-correct. The rate of home price appreciation has far outstripped income growth, and in the amount of time that the number of single-family homes affordable to working families has increased 10%, the number of jobs in retail and service industries has increased almost 100%.”
Equally concerning is the fact that “jobs that are now declining pay about 21% more than jobs that are increasing,” Retsinas said. As a greater portion of the working public takes on lower-paying jobs, the number of those commuting more than 45 minutes has increased substantially. “We do not see a time when the housing market will recalibrate itself to the new labor market. There won’t be a correction in terms of supply because regulatory barriers have been so exacerbated” that needed homes aren’t getting built in the affordable category. “Every day there are more barriers,” he said.
What we don’t know, said Retsinas, is to what extent the absence of affordable workforce housing affects local economic competitiveness. “There is very little hard data on this, which is one reason the business community has not been as engaged as it should be” in finding solutions, he said. “The question we must try to answer is, ‘If you commute 45 minutes to work, what does that do to your productivity?’”
Absent intervention by federal and local government, the future is clear, Retsinas predicts: low-income people will continue paying greater percentages of their income for housing, and service-industry and other employees will be commuting further distances to work. “The people we’re talking about here have an average of about $900 in the bank. That tells me they are one broken transmission, or one doctor bill, away from being in desperate conditions. That is why we need to find out what that crosswalk is between our economy and our housing market.”
Photos by Herman Farrer
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According to Barbara Lipman, research director at the 
