How Bad Is The Affordable Housing Crisis In The US?
There’s no denying that people across the US are facing a housing crisis. As a renter, you may well find yourself paying 30% or more of your income just to keep a roof above your head. If you’re looking to buy a home, you’ll see that house prices are rising at twice the rate of wage growth. Just how bad is the housing crisis, and what can be done about it?
Buying Vs. Renting
Ask any renter, and they will tell you that they would love to own their own home someday. The problem is that it’s almost impossible for them to afford a home. In recent studies, a person working 40 hours a week at minimum wage cannot afford a two bedroom home anywhere in the country.
This causes problems, as affordable housing currently favors buyers over renters. You can see this in tax deductions, as they essentially subsidize middle- and upper-class homes, rather than affordable homes. It’s taken the ability to afford a home out of reach of millions of people in the country.
Rising Costs
It’s not just the cost of buying housing that has gone up. To build those homes, the cost of materials has gone up too. Right now, lumber alone makes up 5 to 10% of the cost of building a home. With these costs rising, it’s getting harder to build affordable housing.
Restrictive Zoning Laws
Zoning laws have created a lot of problems for those trying to create affordable housing. In some areas, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, put limits on what can be built. These can include limits on how high buildings can go, requiring a certain amount of parking spaces, and so on. These limits have come into place and have restricted developers in their opportunities to create new housing.
What Can Be Done?
There are certainly ways in which the housing crisis can be turned around. Inclusionary zoning laws have been brought into places like New York, allowing for more affordable housing to be built. With more existing properties being turned into affordable housing, this will increase demand too. With around 7.2 million affordable homes being needed across the US, it remains to be seen whether this will help with demand.
It’s clear that many factors have lead to the US housing crisis. If changes are made in how affordable housing is built though, these problems can be mitigated.