| Is There Enough Housing To Go Around?
David A. Vandenbroucke
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
This article reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Most studies of rental housing affordability concentrate on households and the burdens they must bear in order to be properly housed. The most popular housing assistance program—vouchers—implicitly assumes that housing problems could be solved if households only have the ability to pay. This approach, however, begs the question of whether the stock of rental housing is sufficient to house all renters at costs they can afford. This article uses American Housing Survey data to examine the distribution of housing supply relative to demand. We begin by naively assuming that we can assign housing to households on the basis of affordability and thereby identify the shortages and surpluses of rental units affordable to households in different income ranges. Next, we recognize that not all affordable units are available because of prior occupation by higher income renters. Finally, we restrict the discussion to units that are affordable, available, and adequate. We use this analytical framework to examine specific issues: the rental supply by income class, variation by location, the sufficiency of the Fair Market Rent standard, changes in housing supply over the period 1985 to 2003, and the relationship between supply and crowding. This paper is based on a chapter written for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s recent Affordable Housing Needs report.
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