Housing Insecurity In The United States

Housing insecurity is the lack of security in an individual shelter that is the result of high housing costs relative to income, poor housing quality, unstable neighborhoods, overcrowding, and, but may not include, homelessness.

Measuring housing insecurity

Researchers from the University of Southern California proposed measuring housing insecurity through the following indicators: housing instability, housing affordability, housing safety, housing quality, neighborhood safety, neighborhood quality, and homelessness.

The Department of Health and Human Services has defined housing insecurity by taking into account proportion to income, housing quality, neighborhoods, overcrowding, and homelessness.

The Center for Disease Control used the frequency of responses to the question of, "How often in the past 12 months would you say you were worried or stressed about having enough money to pay your rent/mortgage? Sometimes, usually, or always?", to identify those who are housing insecurity and to assist in their research on disease prevention.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines housing insecurity based on multiple factors in the unit based on the quality of the house. Based on answers on the American Housing Survey, they deem people housing insecure and the house inadequate based on these structural conditions:

* "does not have hot and cold running water"
* "does not have a bathtub or shower"
* "does not have a flush toilet"
* "shares plumbing facilities"
* "unit was cold for 24 hours or more and more than two breakdowns of the heating equipment have occurred that lasted longer than 6 hours"
* "electricity is not used"
* "has exposed wiring, not every room has working electrical plugs, and the fuses have blown more than twice."
* "has had outside water leaks in the past 12 months"
* "has had inside water leaks in the past 12 months"
* "has holes in the floor"
* "has open cracks wider than a dime"
* "has an area of peeling paint larger than 8 by 11 inches"
* "rats have been seen recently in the unit."

Housing affordability

Housing affordability is defined as the ratio of annualized housing costs to annual income. Different income based measures use different thresholds; however most organizations use either the 30% or 50% threshold, meaning that an individual is housing insecure if they spend more than 30% or 50% of their annual income on housing.

Housing safety

Housing safety is defined as a housing issue that presents an imminent health threat, such as inadequate heating capacity, faulty foundation, evidence of rodents, exposed electrical and more. Housing quality is defined as housing that is substandard but does not pose an imminent health risk, such as no cooking unit, no hot/cold water, no drinking water, faulty sewage, and more.

Neighborhood safety

Neighborhood safety is defined as living in a neighborhood that presents imminent health threats, such as a factory is located within half a block, unit is in a flood plain, unsatisfactory police presence, and more. Neighborhood quality is defined as households in neighborhoods with undesirable characteristics that do not pose an imminent health risk, such as poor city/county services, unit is boarded up, roads need repairs, no stores within fifteen minutes, and more. Homelessness in the United States is defined as "households who define housing type at the time of interviews as either tent, cave, railroad car, unspecified housing unit, a boat, an RV, or an unoccupied site for a mobile home, trailer or tent." If an individual meets one of the above criteria, then they are considered housing insecure under this definition.

Adequate housing

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the United States is a signee, includes the right to adequate housing. They define adequate housing as having security of tenure, availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location, and cultural adequacy. Many of these tenants are similar to the ones above, such as availability of services (neighborhood quality), affordability, habitability (housing quality and housing safety), and location (neighborhood safety and neighborhood quality).

Additional terms

The UN defines security of tenure as having tenure security which guarantees legal protection against forced evictions, harassment, and other threats. They define accessibility as taking into account the specific needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups. They define cultural adequacy as respecting and taking into account the expression of cultural identity. If housing does not meet any of these criteria, it is considerate inadequate, or housing insecure.

Rates

The various forms of housing insecurity have been studied in order to find which life circumstances lead families to housing insecurity. Associations between unreliable housing and factors such as race, income, and family type are especially clear. Housing insecure households are likely to consist of unmarried people. 57% of housing insecure households are made up of unmarried individuals that do not have children.

The second largest category is unmarried households with children, which makes up 21% of the distribution. 63% of housing insecure households are extremely low income

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases