Affordable Housing from Mustang Morning News on Vimeo.
Reporter: Claire Haber
Photographer: Allison Payne
Producers: Kit Chavers and Miriam Sachs
The demand to live in the City of Angels is high, but the supply of homes is not. As a result, half of all homes in the region are considered to be unaffordable, which means that the owner is spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Affordable housing in the Los Angeles County is scarce, and this impacts many of the city’s 18.6 million residents. Housing costs continue to rise and the new living spaces that are being built, cater to the wealthy. As LA prices climb, low to moderate income citizens are being left in the dust.
In March, NPR conducted a study focusing on low-income households and how a lot of people in the United States are struggling to comfortably afford their housing. They found that there are 10.4 million extremely low-income households. In addition, there are only 3.2 million affordable housing units. People are spending most of their income on homes that are in poor condition.
NPR calculated the Most Cost-Burdened Metro Areas for Renters and California made the top ten… three times. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim is 4th, Fresno is 5th, and Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario is 8th. All of these areas make up the Los Angeles County.
The Gap report, done by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, calls for more federal investment in ELI (extremely low income) rental housing, through the National Housing Trust Fund.
The National Housing Trust is a fund that provides revenue to build, preserve, and rehabilitate housing for people with the lowest incomes. NHTF has just released a 2016 Allocation Plan & Implementation. This is part of a block grant to the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories, that are administered by HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development. The NHTF is working to fix affordable housing on a national level, and at a local level, many organizations around the Los Angeles County are planning solutions to this problem.
The Los Angeles County Housing Resource Center is a web-based service that helps people list and find affordable, special-needs, accessible, and emergency housing within LA. This program is under the umbrella of the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles. There are housing authorities in many cities around the Los Angeles County including, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, Compton, Inglewood, Riverside, and Anaheim.
The Urban Institute maps out the number of ELI households, and provides evidence that the number has increased dramatically since 2000. According to this information, there was once 11,341,484 ELI renters in the United States. These ELI renters are living in cities with housing that costs them more than 30% of their income. Their income cannot cover the price of housing and they are forced to settle with housing that is small or in bad condition.
Click here for the interactive map.
This map shows that government investment in providing affordable homes has decreased immensely. The U.S. Department of Housing and Developing (HUD) and the California Department of Housing and Community Development have lowered their investments since 2008, from almost $2.6 billion to just $800 million. Through 2012-2014, redevelopment was not investing in affordable housing at all.
Although effort is being made to create affordable housing options for people across the United States, this change is happening slowly. There are still around 40 million struggling Los Angeles residents in need.
