State Housing Affordability Report and Map Released

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The Public Policy Center’s Housing and Land Use Policy Program has created an interactive web-based map to go along with a report that reveals information on housing affordability in the state of Iowa.  

Lack of decent, safe and reasonably-priced housing has significant negative impacts on the health, safety, and welfare of households and individuals, with trickle down effects to labor productivity, health-care costs, and education outcomes of K-12 children. Slower economic growth and a lower quality of life are additional effects of this trend. 

The map shows information about housing affordability in each Iowa county for three different years: 1990, 2000 and 2010.  The map shows information about households at two levels: households that are cost-burdened (spending over 30% of income on housing) and those that are extremely cost-burdened (spending over 50% of income on housing). Between 1990 and 2010 in the state of Iowa, the percentage of cost-burdened renters rose from 33.5% in 1990 to 40.3% in 2010, and the percentage of all cost-burdened households (both renters and owners) in the state rose from 19.4% in 1990 to 25.5% in 2010, showing that over a 20-year period, the shortage of decent, reasonably priced housing in Iowa has worsened.

Renter households in Iowa are especially hard-hit.  In 2010, 47% of renter households paid more than 50% of their income for housing.  Very little new rental housing is available at prices that are affordable for very low-income and low-income families in Iowa.  For example, in 2013, there were only 87 units available for every 100 households with incomes lower than 50% of area median.  For the 96,000 households in Iowa with incomes less than 30% of the area median, only 44,650 units were available. 

Policy-makers at local, regional and state levels can use this map to see trends in the availability of reasonably-priced housing in their jurisdictions.  Information is provided at the county level, metro-area level, and state level.