The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has been at the center of federal efforts to address the housing crunch and affordability crisis across the U.S.
Home prices are at an all-time high and rents have inched up, hitting the lowest-earning Americans the hardest. The Senate in July introduced a bipartisan bill that aims to increase affordable housing across the country through a variety of ways, including streamlining HUD’s development process for public housing projects.
But the presence of units supported by HUD, which does not determine housing based on poverty levels but rather on income, greatly differs from state to state.
Rhode Island, where the median income of about $82,000 a year is just above the national median, has the greatest share of apartment units supported by compared to any other state in the country.
More than 11 percent of rental apartments — roughly 18,000 of them — in the Ocean State received some type of assistance and/or Section 8 from HUD, according to an analysis by The Real Deal of more than 24,000 HUD buildings and census data.
Following Rhode Island, the states with the largest share of HUD-assisted units are: Massachusetts (5.99 percent), Minnesota (5.9 percent) and Mississippi (5.86 percent).
New York state has more than 124,000 HUD-assisted units, the most in the country by volume but only about 3.5 percent of its apartments receive some type of assistance.
The states with the smallest percentage of HUD-assisted units are: Nevada (0.84 percent), Arizona (1.21 percent) and Utah (1.44 percent).
The poverty rate in Rhode Island is 11.4 percent, which is higher than the national rate of 11.1 percent as of 2023, according to the most recent data available.
A four-person family with two adults and two children falls below the poverty threshold if the household earns less than $30,900 annually, according to 2024 census data. For one adult, the limit is $15,480.
Rhode Island’s poverty rate is roughly half that of Louisiana’s almost 20 percent, which is the highest in the country. In Louisiana, about 3.3 percent of all its rental apartments are assisted by HUD, placing the state 30th in the country.
HUD declined to comment on the record.
Louisiana’s median income of about $58,000 is the second-lowest in the country, after Mississippi.
A 2020 report found that HUD-assisted housing is more concentrated in the Northeast compared to the West because of the older age of communities in the Northeast and an increased likelihood of having public housing authorities.
Nationwide, there are about 970,000 households residing in public housing units, according to HUD. About 3,300 housing authorities manage those properties, which have different income limits based on region and other factors. HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8, provides subsidies to low-income families, elderly individuals, veterans and disabled individuals to pay for rent in eligible private properties.
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