Literature Review Homelessness and Affordable Housing: Background Adequate and Affordable Housing: Rental Disparity The 2017 Worst Case Housing Needs report to congress, a report that utilizes data from the American Housing Survey (AHS), states there is an inadequate supply of affordable rental units for low-income renters. The Worst Case Needs study centers on a selective survey of large metropolitan areas and includes a national examination of four variants of metropolitan locations (central cities, urban and rural suburbs of central cities, and nonmetropolitan areas). Additionally, the Worst Case Needs study categorizes data in the following four geographic regions: the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Nationally, the study concluded that there were only 66 affordable units per every 100 extremely low-income renters. Secondly, the conditions of the affordable and available rental properties are structurally unsafe or inadequate for sustaining a family (Watson, Steffen, Martin, & …show more content…
Referencing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reports, the authors recognize a two-decade trend of rental property affordability decline on a national scale. In 2009, the statistics display half of all renters were paying over 30 percent of their income on housing, a 17 percent increase in rental price since 1990. Additionally, the number of renters paying half of their income for housing increased by 38 percent from 1990 (Bostic, Hughes, & Salazar, 2013). A 2017 study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) noted that the 11.4 million extremely low-income (ELI) households accounted for 26 percent of U.S rental housholds (i.e., there are only 35 affordable homes for every 100 ELI renter househoulds). Moreover, over 70 percent of ELI households spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent and