McClatchy: Less housing for the poor

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/17894.html

Less housing for the poor
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Fri, July 13, 2007


WASHINGTON — Growing numbers of the nation’s poorest households are using more than half their earnings for rent while waiting years for federal housing assistance that may never come.

The phenomenon is largely playing out in urban and suburban locales, but has exploded recently in rural areas as coveted rental assistance becomes harder to get due to high demand and scant funding from Congress.

The lack of affordable homes for poor families is the nation’s No. 1 housing problem and undermines the stability and security of families and communities nationwide.

A new report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development describes the startling growth of the problem since 2003. It found that 6 million impoverished households used most of their monthly earnings for housing or lived in substandard conditions in 2005. That’s an increase of 16 percent, or 817,000 families, since 2003.

The number of rural families facing this dilemma grew by 51 percent to nearly 1 million households over the same two-year span.

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