City among worst for low-income housing

The city of Houston has the second-fewest homes available for the lowest income renters at a time when more and more Americans are out of work due to the pandemic, a report released Thursday found.

Nationwide, there are 37 homes accessible to every 100 extremely low-income renters (households with income at or below the poverty line or, if it’s higher, the median income of their area). In Texas, the ratio is 29 to 100; in Houston, the ratio drops to 19 to 100.

The only metro area with fewer units available is Las Vegas.

“The report paints a really bleak picture, and a picture we should all be concerned about,” said Zoe Middleton, the southeast co-director for low-income housing advocacy group Texas Housers.

The annual Gap Report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition documents shortages in affordable housing nationwide. While the pandemic exacerbated the disparities, the full damage of the economic fallout has yet to be quantified. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an order aimed at protecting tenants from being evicted, it does not account for the millions in back rent tenants and landlords are facing.

Even with the eviction order, the report found, 9.8 percent of renters in January 2021 said they were behind on rent and thought they would likely be evicted within the next two months. In Houston, landlords have filed over 5,000 evictions since Jan. 1, 2020.

Pandemic struggle

Middleton said there’s an easy link between the lack of affordable housing and eviction filings. When people are barely making rent each month, any mishap can set them back. And the coronavirus comes with many potential mishaps.

In Houston, the numbers are worse. Seventy-nine percent of the lowest-income renters pay at least half of their income toward rent and utilities.

Those numbers are worse for communities of color. “Cost-burdened” renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent or utilities. For “extremely cost-burdened” renters, that amount jumps to 50 percent. While 42 percent of white renters are cost-burdened, 52 percent of Latino renters and 54 percent of Black renters are.

Urgent need

Middleton said the report shows an urgent need not only to create and preserve affordable housing but to make it habitable.

“We see a lot of the homes for low-income Houstonians aren’t always healthy,” she said. “All homes should be health homes, including affordable homes.”