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More than 50% of poor LA households live in deficient or unaffordable housing: HUD study
In New York, 44 percent of poor households had trouble affording housing
Los Angeles tops the list of U.S. cities where the highest percentage of poor citizens live in substandard housing, unaffordable housing or both, according to a new study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs.
In Los Angeles in 2015, 567,000 of the city’s 1 million households designated as very poor spent more than 50 percent of their income on rent or lived in undesirable housing, according to the the study cited by the Los Angeles Times.
In New York, which came in second in the study, 44 percent of very poor households had a hard time finding affordable housing, and 815,000 lived in what the study designated as the “worst-case housing needs” category.
“Today’s affordable rental housing crisis requires that we take a more business-like approach on how the public sector can reduce the regulatory barriers so the private markets can produce more housing for more families,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement.
The homeless population in Los Angeles grew by 23 percent last year to 58,000 people, a problem that is closely linked to rising rents in the city, as tenants priced out of gentrifying neighborhoods find themselves with few other affordable places to live. [LAT] – Eddie Small