Are You Spending 50% Of Your Income On Housing?
We all know that home prices have shot through the roof and for most of us it is practically not possible to own a home. But it is only when these facts are expressed in figures do we realize the enormity of the situation. Today, the county’s median family would have to spend 54 percent of its income to afford the county’s median home. In 2000, the figure was 26 percent.
And the scariest part is that the scarcity of affordable housing is a deepening national crisis. And this crisis doesn’t cover only for inner-city families on welfare. The problem now affects people in higher income brackets and has even moved to the suburbs. One-third of Americans now spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing. The working poor have it even worse as half of them spend at least 50 percent of their income on rent! Washingtonpost.com reports:
Yet nobody in national politics is doing anything about it — or even talking about it. For most of the past 70 years, housing was a bipartisan issue. In recent decades, its association with urban poverty made it more of a Democratic issue. But now it is simply a nonissue. The current crunch falls hardest on renters in Democratic-leaning cities and metropolitan areas, but Democrats have ignored the issue as resolutely as Republicans. Neither Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) nor President Bush even bothered to propose affordable housing plans during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Read more: The Housing Crisis Goes Suburban
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October 9th, 2006 at 9:45 am
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