City Housing Commissioner and Housing Bureau Director Pen Op-Ed on Housing Affordability, Cite Recent National Report

Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish and Portland Housing Bureau Director Margaret Van Vliet co-authored an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Oregonian that estimates some 15,000 households in Portland can’t afford to rent or buy an appropriately sized home for their family. Continued high unemployment and increased demand are only expected to exaggerate the problem in the coming years. The piece then points to the importance of the City’s work to preserve existing affordable housing, which is part of its efforts as a partner in the Oregon Housing Preservation Project. Click here to read the op-ed.

The authors refer to a released recently report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, America’s Rental Housing: Meeting Challenges, Building on Opportunities, detailing the myriad factors that continue to deteriorate affordability across the country and cause increasing numbers of families to spend too much of their income on adequate housing. Though the report doesn’t include state-level statistics, one chart shows the percentage of renter households with severe housing burdens (spending 50% or more of income on housing) in major metropolitan areas. From 2000 to 2009, the share of severely burdened households in Portland increased from 18.8% to 25.5%. Click here to read the Joint Center’s full report.

— Posted on 5/09/2011