ACS 2008: Oregon Severe Cost Burdens for Renters Increase, State Ranking Drops.

The American Community Survey released last week has lots of income and housing data.

I extracted the data for renter severe cost burdens (paying 50% or more of income for rent) and compared the 2008 Oregon data with other states and with the same ACS data for years since 2005.

The two page comparison I put together is HERE. It shows

• About 1/4 of all Oregon renters pay more than 50% of their income for rent, about the same as the national average.
• After a couple of years of improvement, Oregon's relative standing slipped from 33rd to 40th best in the country. (That is still better then the 45th ranking that Oregon had in 2005).
• Oregon's increase in renter cost burden was higher than the national increase from 2007-2008 (4.9% vs. 2.2%) but the decrease in Oregon from 2005-2008 was also higher than the national decrease ( -4.8% vs.-.01%).
• NOTE: I think my data is more precise than some other renter cost burden calculations because in the denominator of my calculations I use only the universe of renter households where rent burden has been calculated, instead of the entire universe of renter households.
  

Want MORE 2008 Renter Cost Burden Data?
I have also created a query for the 2008 ACS renter cost burden data table (B25020). My query includes ALL rent burden levels and ALL of the following geographic areas:

1. US
2. Oregon
3. Oregon Counties
4. Oregon Places
5. Oregon Congressional Districts

You can RIGHT CLICK and save that query to a location on your PC HERE.

Once you have downloaded the query to your PC you can then go to the main ACS American Fact Finder site HERE.

Look for the "Load Query" option underlined in blue near the top, and when the dialogue box opens ("Click 'Browse' to find the previously saved query on your computer"), browse to the query that you downloaded from me and then hit the "go" button. Once the query is loaded, the data for ALL levels of rent burden for ALL of these geographic areas will be visible for viewing and/or downloading. (Pretty cool, eh?).

(TIP: If you want to try to replicate the same query for other years you MIGHT try to substitute your year of interest for any and all "2008" references in the query as it appears in the LONG browser address line. I successfully tested this and it does work at least for 2007).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.