2006-2005: ACS Says Oregon Severe Cost Burdened Rental Households Dropped by 8,500: 7 % Improvement Was 3rd Best in Nation

A comparison of American Community Survey (ACS) 2006 and 2005 state severe cost burdened rental housing data has turned up some unexpected good news for Oregon renters.

ACS estimates show that in Oregon there was a reduction of 8,673 renter l HH’s (from 128,467 HH’s to 119,794 HH’s ) who paid 50% or more of their income for rent—so called “severe cost burdened renters”. This numerical reduction coverts to a 7% percentage reduction in Oregon severe cost burdened renters. This was the third largest state percentage improvement in the country, trailing only Vermont and Alaska.

In 2005 among all states Oregon had the 5th highest state severe cost burden % for renters. With the 2006 reported improvements, Oregon's severe cost burden % for renters dropped Oregon's rank to the 17th highest in the country. (And subject to all the usual caveats about ACS limitations).

While the ACS estimate is that severe rent burdened rental HH’s in Oregon DID decline and our state rank did improve, it's sobering to remember that even with improvement one out of every four rental households continued to pay 50% or more of their income for rent, and Oregon still ranked about the median for all states in the degree of severe cost burden for our renters.

In the US the % of severe rent burdened households increased by .1% during the same period. This occurred even though the number of rent burdened households decreased by 49,000+ because the universe of HH’s for which rent burdens were calculated decreased in 2006 vs. 2005.

Adding Idaho as the 4^th ranked and Washington at the 6^th ranked states in severe cost rent burden % improvements from 2006-2005 means that four of the top six state % reductions in renters with severe cost burdens were in the Northwest. Moreover, more than HALF of the estimated 49,000+ national reduction in severe rent burdened households came from our four Northwest states.

Details can be found in the two page PDF file HERE showing 2005 and 2006 data for severe cost burdens by state, and state rankings by change in the percentage of HH’s with those burdens.