Most New York families spend over a third of income on housing, study says

Sixty-nine percent of working families in New York State spent more than a third of their income on housing in 2006, according to a nationwide study released yesterday. Over 25 percent of the families made less than twice the federal poverty line, qualifying them as low-income, the study produced by the Working Poor Families Project found.  New York had the highest income inequality in the U.S. in 2006, with families in the top 20 percent making 11.5 times as much money as families in the bottom 20 percent.