For the past two decades, the cost of rent has risen faster than incomes. In 2023, almost half of US households who rent (49.7 percent) were housing cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing. The share is even higher among renters with very low incomes, with more than 80 percent housing cost burdened.
Recent cuts to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development could make it even harder for families to afford housing. The Trump administration plans to cut half the agency’s personnel, which provides rental assistance to more than 5 million low- and moderate-income households and vital funds for communities to promote new housing development.
Despite this, the Trump administration has said it aims to decrease the cost of housing and expand the housing supply by reducing regulation and building housing on federal land. However, most federal land is isn’t in areas where housing is needed. Additionally, proposed mass deportations would reduce the construction labor force and worsen supply constraints.
Even if additional policies were introduced to expand our housing supply, supply-side solutions alone will not solve our housing crisis. Increasing the overall supply does not guarantee the creation of affordable units, nor does it ensure those units will be occupied by people with low incomes.
Using data from Urban’s Upward Mobility Initiative, we find that very few cities have an adequate supply of affordable housing. And even those with an adequate supply do not have enough units available to households with low incomes. To ensure all residents can achieve upward mobility and have the housing they need to thrive, communities must not only expand the housing supply but also implement policies that ensure housing is affordable and available to those who need it.
Why affordable housing matters
Housing affordability and security are key to helping communities boost residents' mobility from poverty. When there’s a shortage of affordable housing in resource-rich neighborhoods, families face financial insecurity, housing instability, and reduced access to opportunities such as jobs and high-quality education. Economies as a whole can also suffer when residents with low incomes live far from available jobs.
Having stable housing helps tie people to their community, fostering a sense of belonging and being a valued neighbor. The safety of a stable and affordable home improves psychological and physical health and provides residents with the autonomy and dignity to strive for a better life.
Affordable housing isn’t always available to the households who need it most
Using data from Urban’s Upward Mobility Initiative, we look at affordable housing supply for every 100 households with very low incomes (at or below 50 percent of the local median income) in US cities with populations greater than 75,000. We plotted this distribution.
We found most cities have fewer than 100 rental units affordable for every 100 households with very low incomes. Many cities have half as many units needed to serve households in need.
Even when a community has enough affordable housing to serve the number of families with low incomes, some households with higher incomes may be living in the affordable units, making them unavailable to households in need.
To understand the distribution of cities with enough affordable and available housing, we looked at rental units that were both affordable to a household making 50 percent of the area median income and either vacant or occupied by a renter at that income level or lower.
Though some cities had enough affordable rental units per 100 families with very low incomes, very few have enough units that are affordable and available to those that need them most.
Below, we highlight 10 cities that have a sufficient supply of affordable rental housing but an insufficient supply of available housing to meet the needs of households with very low incomes.
Midland, Texas, for instance, has a healthy supply of affordable rental units at 131 for every 100 households with very low incomes, but only 71 of those units are occupied by or available to households at that income level. Springdale, Arizona, has 123 affordable rental units for every 100 households with very low incomes, but only 68 of those units are available—the rest are occupied by higher-income households.
How cities can both expand the affordable housing supply and ensure it’s available to those who need it most
To ensure all residents can achieve upward mobility, cities should build more housing and enact policies that set aside affordable units for income-qualifying households as they build. This is particularly important in areas that are growing quickly. New market-rate development can exacerbate the displacement and exclusion of households with low incomes in the hottest housing markets if subsidized housing is unavailable.
To set aside affordable units for families with low incomes, cities can:
- Implement inclusionary zoning. Cities could require developers to designate a percentage of units in new projects as affordable housing for income-qualifying households. Or they could offer tax credits, density bonuses, or a reduction in parking requirements to encourage developers to include a percentage of affordable housing in their developments.
- Create or expand dedicated funding sources, such as housing trust funds, to help finance affordable housing construction for families with eligible incomes.
- Use publicly owned land or vacant properties to develop affordable housing.
- Build municipal social housing. Montgomery County, Maryland, partners with private developers to build mixed-income housing while retaining majority ownership of the building.
Local leaders can also expand affordable and available housing by taking steps to increase the overall supply of housing (PDF), which can lead households with higher incomes to move out of lower-cost units and into newly available units.
To do so, cities can:
- Relax zoning restrictions to allow for denser housing development, particularly near transit. This can reduce per unit costs, increasing overall availability.
- Increase the speed of permitting for new development.
- Enact by-right development policies (PDF), which streamline the approval process by allowing new development to proceed if it meets a community’s standards, rather than requiring it to go through discretionary reviews.
- Reduce or defer permit processing and impact fees for qualifying housing developments.
- Reduce parking requirements for new housing developments, which can add substantial costs to development and even make some projects infeasible.
- Encourage modular construction, which can make affordable housing cheaper and quicker to build.
By leveraging tools like the Upward Mobility Data Dashboard, local leaders can align housing strategies with broader community investments to create vibrant, inclusive places where all residents have the opportunity to succeed. Ensuring housing is both affordable and available for households with low incomes is more than just a matter of shelter—it’s foundational to accessing essential resources like schools, jobs, and health care that drive upward mobility from poverty.
Let’s build a future where everyone, everywhere has the opportunity and power to thrive
Urban is more determined than ever to partner with changemakers to unlock opportunities that give people across the country a fair shot at reaching their fullest potential. Invest in Urban to power this type of work.
