经济适用房: The Problem and the Solution
作者:内特·乔丹
What comes to mind when you think of affordable housing? Maybe it’s the term Section 8. 比如首字母缩略词HUD. It might be neither of those things, but if you’re looking to buy a home or rent an apartment in 2023, maybe the idea of affordable housing is a seemingly unreachable goal. The good and (mostly) bad news is the same: you’re not alone.
对于许多, the combination of increasing real estate prices and higher borrowing costs is an obstacle to home ownership too difficult to overcome. 解决办法是什么?? If there’s a roof over your head now, whether you rent it or own it, maybe you have the option of staying put and biding time until real estate values and interest rates come down. Who’s to say how long you’ll wait, or if those things will even happen at all? And what about those simply looking to find anywhere to call home? The unfortunate reality is that the national supply of affordable housing is woefully insufficient to meet demand.
在2023年的Gap报告中, the National Low Income Housing Coalition notes that there is a shortage of 7.3 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes nationally. These renters are categorized as households with incomes at or below the federal poverty line, or 30% of area median income (whichever is greater). 在这种情况下, an affordable unit is one where the cost of rent and utilities is less than 30% of the related household income threshold (i.e., the aforementioned extremely low-income threshold). 在北卡罗来纳州, only 39% of renter households that exist are affordable and available to extremely low-income renters.
What happens when there is not enough affordable housing? 无家可归的继续. The cyclical nature of poverty remains unbroken. Local, regional, and national economies suffer suboptimal growth. The majority of extremely low-income renters who cannot access affordable housing spend more than half of their incomes on housing. For those renters, it’s not about thriving. 而是关于生存. When housing costs dominate your budget to the point that essentials like food and healthcare are an ongoing strain, how can you invest in the future of yourself and your family? What resources does a child have to access education and higher paying work to break from the cycle of poverty?
The solution to the shortage of affordable housing, 在每个层面上, seems simple: greater investment from the government sector. That investment should happen through increased funding for rental assistance, larger allocations for financing new construction and rehabilitation of existing affordable housing stock, and more efficient monitoring to ensure the disparity between affordable housing supply and demand is shrinking.
纳撒尼尔·乔丹 本金,注册会计师
Nate is a principal in our Firm’s 格林斯博罗 office with 13 years of audit experience. He is responsible for the planning, 表演, 监督, and review of audit work to ensure engagements meet professional standards. Nate works extensively with clients in the affordable housing, 非营利性的, and governmental industries. He is also heavily involved in the […]
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Quantitative figures sourced from: http://nlihc.org/gap