Important Stuff: First Update in Decade of Oregon County "Affordable AND Available" Housing Supply by Income Brackets.

NLIHC has recently published statewide profiles of affordable and available housing supply HERE; state level data is found on page 5 . This required major data crunching from NLIHC and I am very appreciative of the amount of work that went into producing this data.

HUD has yet to update their CHAS (Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy) data in a user friendly format for 2010, so useable local HUD CHAS data on the supply of affordable and available housing remains stuck in a 2000 time warp. (National and regional "Affordable and available" housing supply is a key component of periodic HUD Worst Case Housing Needs Reports sent to the Congress; the 2009 report is HERE).

Why the concept of "Affordable AND Available" Housing Supply is So Important.

1. The count of a supply of units with market rents that are “affordable” to lower income families does NOT mean that those units are available or occupied by lower income households--a significant share of units with rents affordable to extremely low income and very low income renters are occupied by households with HIGHER incomes. 
2. As income increases, the "affordable AND available" supply of rental housing increases. In many cases there is a gross surplus of units affordable to households at 80% of median income, and only a very small deficit of affordable AND available units at that income level. That is one of the key reasons that subsidies for rental housing are NOT usually targeted at higher income levels.
   
3. For the lowest income families part of the solution is to create/preserve a universe of income restricted affordable housing that is reserved exclusively for use by extremely low income (less than 30% MFI) and very low income renters(less than 50% MFI)---"Project based assistance" of some kind. 
4. The graph pasted below uses 2010 Oregon data to illustrate how affordable AND available supply increases as income increases. In 2010 the Oregon estimate is that there were only 22 affordable AND available units for each 100 extremely low income (less than 30% MFI) renters, vs 95 for each 100 low income (less than 80% MFI) renters.  

PDF and Excel Versions
First Updated Oregon Affordable and Available Housing Supply Data In a Decade:
Included in a related NLIHC Oregon housing profile HERE is a map that includes county level affordable and available housing percentages (Housing profiles for Oregon Congressional Districts from NLIHC are also available HERE). 

Fortunately, I was able to obtain from Neighborhood Partnerships, a state partner of NLIHC, the Excel workbook that was used to create the county map in the NLIHC Oregon housing profile.(Tip of the hat to Janet Byrd, NP XO for providing Excel file within hours of my request).

I am posting the Excel workbook I received from NP with two additional worksheets added:
1. A worksheet with the statewide total from the NLIHC report for Oregon, along with the graph posted above.
2. A statewide and county summary by income group showing, per 100 renter households, the
A. Number/supply of units that would be affordable to that income group.
B. Number/supply of units that would be both "Affordable AND Available".

This second worksheet also includes a series of three graphs that visually show that data for households with incomes below 30%, 50%, and 80% MFI thresholds. (graphs are to the right of the summary table).

The 4 page PDF file I created HERE has only the statewide and county summary table and the three graphs that I created in the second worksheet. 

The Excel file/workbook, which contains the summary and graphs, AND all of the data for Oregon counties from NLIHC and NPF can be viewed/downloaded directly HERE and is also embedded below:



IMPORTANT NOTE: Estimates for Gilliam, Sherman, and Wheeler counties should be used with caution. These are counties with less than 100 renter households in an income category, less than 100 affordable units, or a high margin of error.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.