The current affordable housing gap is so vast that it would take over a century to be fixed at the current pace of construction in 38 of the country’s 51 biggest metropolitan areas, according to a new study by the National Multifamily Housing Council and NYU Urban Lab.
More than half of all renter households in the United States, over 22.4 million, are rent-burdened, according to researchers, which means they spend over 30 percent of their income on housing.
The main reason behind this high number is the existing lack of options in the affordable rental market, which forces even households with moderate-to-high incomes to pay prices higher than they can afford. For extremely low income households, no private housing will ever be affordable without some sort of subsidy under the current circumstances, researchers said…