Decomposing housing unaffordability

• Authors: Salim Furth
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

A US household is considered ‘rent burdened’ when its rent exceeds 30% of its income. This simple ratio can be decomposed to better understand the sources of unaffordability across space. To demonstrate this new approach, I rewrite the equation for rent burden as a sum of four factors: rent gap, income gap, excess size cost, and demographic baseline, and show that US rental unaffordability is mostly the result of low incomes. Focusing on the New England region, however, I show that high rent is the primary cause of unaffordability in high-cost, high-wage metro areas. This decomposition can help affordability advocates prioritise strategies appropriately across space.

Keywords

EN

housing economics; private rented markets

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Critical Housing Analysis
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 62-71
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Salim Furth

• Critical Housing Analysis, redakce,Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i. Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic