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Tenant Insecurity
RENTAL HOUSING IN DELAWARE
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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 278,000 housing units in Delaware. About
77,000 of this total are rental units. 44,000 of the 77,000 are multi-family complexes.
Only about 15,000 are subsidized.
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Statewide
Needs |
REPAIR OR REPLACEMENT of 8.5% of rental units which are substandard;
rental units comprise 54% of all substandard units.
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1500 MORE UNITS in the next four years alone to meet the demands of
growing numbers of poor and very poor.
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TIGHTENING SUPPLY: Vacancy rates remain low enough to keep rents above
the means of a growing number of families.
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THREATS TO EXISTING ASSISTED HOUSING AND TO THE REMNANTS OF THE SAFETY
NET: Legislation being introduced in Congress would send less money to the State, bring
about the loss of hundreds of assisted units, and allow fewer of the poorest households to
be served. 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.
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Incomes |
A LIVING WAGE: Household incomes of the poorest Delawareans are
increasing at a much slower rate than others and the hourly wage needed to afford a
typical1 two-bedroom unit at 30% of income is now $11.72/ hour, more than
twice the new minimum wage of $5.15. 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.
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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.2
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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.
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16,687 FAMILIES: Less than one fourth of all tenants (23%) can afford
monthly housing costs of $500 - $749.
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23,000 FAMILIES: Delaware’s Poorest Households
have incomes at or below 30 % of the median3 income.
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36,047 FAMILIES: Only half of all tenants can afford monthly housing
costs of between $250 and $499.
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55,524 FAMILIES: 23% of all households earn 50% of median income or less.
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91,264 FAMILIES: 37% of all households earn 80% of median or less.
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NOTES: 1"Typical" being at "Fair Market
Rent" which is at the 40th percentile of all rents for that size unit. So, 60% of
rental units fall in a range above this mark, as difficult as it is for this
group to reach.
2Those 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: Can America Pay the Rent? National Low Income Housing Coalition, May
1996
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.
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