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4.8 Million Working Families Have Critical Housing Needs

One in seven American households — 14.4 million — paid more than half their income for housing or lived in substandard conditions in 2001 and about one-third of them were low- to moderate-income families, Conrad Egan, executive director of the National Housing Conference, told the Workforce Housing Symposium, last week in Washington, D.C.

Egan appeared on the panel with David Crowe, NAHB's senior staff vice president for federal regulation and housing policy.

Presented by the Homeownership Alliance, the symposium was held in observation of National Homeownership Month.

Egan said that 4.8 million families working the equivalent of a full-time job and earning between the minimum wage of $10,172 and up to 120% of median income in their area had critical housing needs in 2001. That was a sharp 60% increase from 3 million families only four years earlier in 1997.

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Among the working families, housing costs were the primary reason they were experiencing housing problems; 83.4% paid more than 50% of their income for housing in 2001.

Of those with critical housing needs, 53% were home owners and 47% were renters.

And critical housing needs are not confined to the nation’s cities, Egan said. Of the working families with housing difficulties, 39.5% were in the central city, 42.5% in the suburbs and 18.0% in non-metropolitan areas.

The findings are contained in a report, “America’s Working Families and the Housing Landscape 1997-2001,” from the Center for Housing Policy and the National Housing Conference.
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