HUD’s 2017 edition of its Worst Case Housing Needs shows that severe housing problems are on the rise – households classified as having worst case housing needs increased from 7.72 million in 2013 to 8.3 million in 2015. The report goes on to say that severe housing problems have grown 41% since 2007. The study posits that the large increase from 2013 to 2015 is mostly due to a shift from homeownership to higher rates of renters, the trend, which has continued since the great recession, drives up demand for rental housing.
This is the 16th installment of the biannual study. The peak data point for Worst case housing was 8.48 million households observed in 2011, a number not far off from the 2015 data. Worst case housing needs is defined as a very low income renter without government housing assistance and is either paying more than half of income towards rent, is living in severely inadequate conditions, or both.
