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Tenant Insecurity
RENTAL HOUSING IN DELAWARE
 

Tenants continue to be the group most at risk in the state’s housing market. Caught between a tight supply and a declining real wage, many tenants are hard pressed to maintain a home without doing without other necessities, and they are the group most likely to fall into homelessness. Too many poor are competing for too few affordable units.

Supply

  • There are approximately 299,000 housing units in Delaware.
  • About 83,000 of this total are rental units.
  • 44,000 of the 77,000 are multi-family complexes.
  • Only about 15,000 are subsidized.
Location Number of Households
Total Renter Renter as % of Total
Delaware 298,736 82,698 27.68
Kent County 47,224 14,184 30.04
New Castle County 188,935 56,421 29.86
Sussex County 62,577 12,093 19.32
Dover, DE 47,224 14,184 30.04
Wilm-Newark, DE-MD 188,935 56,421 29.86
Source: Out of Reach 2002, www.nlihc.org

 

Statewide Needs

  • REPAIR OR REPLACEMENT of 8.5% of rental units which are substandard; rental units comprise 54% of all substandard units.

  • 1500 MORE UNITS in the next four years alone to meet the demands of growing numbers of poor and very poor.

  • A LIVING WAGE: Household incomes of the poorest Delawareans are increasing at a much slower rate than others. According to the most recent study,1the full-time hourly equivalent of the wage needed to afford a two-bedroom in Delaware is $13.79. This is 205% of the average placement wage for workers moving off welfare through A Better Chance.2 It is 224% of the current minimum wage.

    While Delaware has been very successful at job creation, the result has not been incomes that allow most of those new workers to obtain housing at an affordable rent. Existing jobs that did provide that security continue to disappear and are not being replaced.

  • TIGHTENING SUPPLY: Vacancy rates remain low enough to keep rents above the means of a growing number of families.

  • THREATS TO EXISTING ASSISTED HOUSING AND TO THE REMNANTS OF THE SAFETY NET: Federal and State programs designed to dismantle many housing programs and emphasize "back to work" solutions to poverty and housing issues, less federal money to the State, and the potential loss of hundreds of assisted units. Cuts already enacted or contemplated in welfare, SSI to children, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Food Stamps, and Medicaid increase the precarious nature of life for the least advantaged Delawareans.

Incomes

  • 9600 FAMILIES are at risk of homelessness: They earn less than 50% of area median income and pay more than 50% of their income on housing.3

  • 16,000 FAMILIES are "Shelter Poor": They are in poverty after paying to keep themselves in a home and need help to avoid paying more than 30% of their income for housing.

  • 16,687 FAMILIES: Less than one fourth of all tenants (23%) can afford monthly housing costs of $500 - $749.

  • 23,000 FAMILIES: Delaware’s Poorest Households have incomes at or below 30 % of the median3 income

  • 36,047 FAMILIES: Only half of all tenants can afford monthly housing costs of between $250 and $499.

  • 55,524 FAMILIES: 23% of all households earn 50% of median income or less.

  • 91,264 FAMILIES: 37% of all households earn 80% of median or less.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
NOTES:   1 Out of Reach: Rental Housing at What Cost? National Low Income Housing Coalition, October 1998. Census baseline date from 1990 Census STF3C CD-ROM. Fair Market Rent and median income data are FY1998 from the HUD website.
2) A Better Chance, Report for 12/29/98, compiled from DCIS I and DCIS II data, last report available.
3Those households account for 14.5 percent of all renter households in the state. These numbers do not include very poor households in assisted housing. Adding households living in overcrowded conditions and poor homeowners, the number of families immediately at risk "of financial collapse and ultimately homelessness" rises to 14,486.
3Over half of an estimated 45,000 households, earning less than 80 percent of the median income, who have housing problems.

Sources:
Statewide Housing Needs Assessment: Executive Summary, Delaware State Housing Authority, August 1996.
Out of Reach. National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2002
FHA Multifamily Expiring Section 8 Contracts Report - Delaware, HUD, Office of Housing, November 1996.
The Choice is Ours: Housing or Homelessness, National Coalition for the Homeless, December 1996.

--adapted from The Housing Journal, Winter 1997, Page 3

Delaware Housing Coalition