As advocates for affordable housing, we often hear the terms “housing equality” and “housing justice” in community conversations. Today, we aim to define these concepts and explain why they are crucial to creating thriving communities. Whether you live in a bustling city or a rural town, understanding these principles can help us all work toward ensuring that everyone has a safe and affordable place to call home. In this post, we will focus on these key concepts in the rental market; however, please note that there are also significant issues within the homeownership market related to this topic.
What is Housing Equality?
Housing Equality can be defined as identifying and implementing tactics that help resolve disparities in housing. Housing Equality can occur when individual characteristics cannot predict housing outcomes, meaning that housing is not based on factors such as gender, religion, ethnicity, or other identifiable traits, whether biased or not.
Think of housing Equality as fairness in housing outcomes. Equality means meeting community members where they are by providing resources that are proportionate to their needs to thrive. Housing equality recognizes that people start from different places and face different barriers.
For example, a family with a poor credit history may struggle to qualify for quality rental units. Housing Equality means providing tailored resources, like fair housing enforcement, credit repair programs, or tenant assistance, to help level the playing field. No one should be left unhoused in our communities due to poor credit decisions that may be complex to resolve or understand.
What is Housing Justice?
Housing justice takes a broader, more transformative approach. We define housing justice as ensuring that everyone has access to affordable housing that promotes health, well-being, and upward mobility by addressing structural racism and other systems of oppression.
The Urban Institute, a thought leader on this topic, defines housing justice as “Housing Justice ensures that everyone has access to stable, affordable, and adequate housing, addressing inequities rooted in systemic racism and other forms of oppression.”
When we break this concept down to its most basic idea, it is the assurance of stable, high-quality, safe, and affordable housing to residents of all income levels, races, genders, and ethnicities. This movement recognizes that housing is a human right and calls for systemic changes to how we think about and provide housing in our communities.
Housing justice acknowledges that many of today’s housing challenges stem from decades of discriminatory policies and practices. It seeks not just to address individual housing needs, but to transform the systems that create housing inequality in the first place.
Connecting the Concepts to The Rental Housing Crisis: By the Numbers
The statistics paint a sobering picture of rental housing disparities in America, affecting millions of families across racial and income lines:
Overall Rental Affordability Crisis
According to the most recent U.S. Census, over 21 million renter households spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2023, representing nearly half (49.7%) of the 42.5 million renter households in the United States for whom rent burden is calculated. In LaPorte County, as of 2023, 45% of the population pays more than 30% of their monthly income on rent, which translates to about 50,000 people.
The shortage is particularly acute for the lowest-income renters:
- The U.S. has a shortage of 7.1 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes – that is, incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater. Only 35 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households.
- This represents a shortage of over 1,700 units in LaPorte County for those who are cost-burdened.
Racial Disparities in Rental Housing
The rental housing crisis disproportionately affects communities of color:
Cost Burden by Race:
- Within Black or African American alone renter households, or households where the householder identified as being only Black or African American, 4.6 million (56.2%) paid more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2023. Another 2.0 million (54.7%) Some Other Race alone renter households were cost burdened.
Severe Cost Burden:
- According to the 2023 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 2.5 million (30.6%) Black and 1.1 million (28.8%) Other Race renter householders were severely cost-burdened.
Extremely Low-Income Renters by Race: The disparities are most stark among the
lowest-income renters, according to a National Low-Income Housing Coalition Study published in 2019:
- Twenty percent of black households, 18% of American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) households, and 16% of Hispanic households are classified as extremely low-income renters. Six percent of white non-Hispanic households are extremely low-income renters.
- The majority of extremely low-income renters who are severely housing cost-burdened are: 71.5% of Hispanic, 70.9% of non-Hispanic black, and 69.6% of non-Hispanic white extremely low-income renters.
Rural Rental Housing Challenges
Housing Equality and justice aren’t just urban issues; rural communities face unique rental housing challenges:
Rural Housing Statistics
- Rural America is home to about 20 percent of the U.S. population and covers more than 90 percent of the U.S. landmass.
- Overall, 80% of the nation’s high-poverty counties are in rural areas.
- According to the Pew Charitable Trust, “Research shows that out of the 152 counties in the United States with the most severe shortages of affordable rental units, 101 of them are in rural areas.”
Declining Rural Rental Stock
Rental housing options in rural America are not only scarce but also in decline.
Rural areas also face unique challenges:
- Smaller micro- and metropolitan areas, as well as largely rural states, generally tend to have lower shares of cost-burdened households. However, this often masks the severe shortage of rental options in these areas.
- We see this in our own country, with a significant lack of affordable housing. But this lack of housing spans across income levels; simply put, there is not enough housing in our community.
Historical Context, How We Got Here:
Understanding housing Equality and Justice requires acknowledging how discriminatory policies created today’s rental housing disparities. Many of the factors that have led to today’s unequal access to housing are rooted in discriminatory practices of our past.
Key historical factors include:
Redlining and Exclusionary Practices: For instance, the FHA would designate specific neighborhoods as high-risk, primarily based on the racial composition of the residents, and deny federal mortgage backing for homes in those areas. This meant that people of color were effectively not able to apply for a mortgage except through predatory lending systems.
Ongoing Impact: The Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped to end the practice of redlining, but the damage had already been done: locking millions out of homeownership for generations has contributed to the disparities in wealth building between races that we see today. This forced many families of color into the rental market, where they continue to face discrimination and limited options.
Single Family Zoning: Single-family zoning is a land use regulation that restricts areas to only allow detached, single-family homes, prohibiting apartments, duplexes, townhomes, and other multi-family housing types. While this may seem like a neutral policy, single-family zoning has historically been used as a tool of exclusion. By preventing the construction of more affordable housing types like apartments and duplexes, these zoning laws effectively keep lower-income families, who are disproportionately people of color, out of specific neighborhoods. This limits rental housing options and concentrates affordable rental units in particular areas, contributing to both housing segregation and the overall shortage of rental housing.
The Current Impact: What These Numbers Mean:
The shortage of affordable rental housing has real consequences for families and communities:
Severe Cost Burden Effects
When individuals and families are housing cost-burdened, they often have to cut back on basic necessities such as food, transportation, and healthcare, and they frequently lack the ability to save for emergencies.
Lower-income renters, in particular, have less disposable income left over after paying for housing than ever before, forcing difficult trade-offs that have implications for their well-being and health.
Impact on Communities of Color
The shortage of affordable rental units disproportionately affects Black, Latinx, and Indigenous households, who are more likely than white households to be renters and have extremely low incomes.
Why This Matters for Everyone in Our Community and Beyond:
Housing Equality and Justice benefit entire communities. When everyone has access to stable, affordable housing:
- Children perform better in school.
- Families can build economic security.
- Communities become more resilient and economically diverse.
- Health outcomes improve across populations.
Understanding housing equality and housing justice provides frameworks for addressing the complex challenges facing renters in our communities. The statistics reveal significant disparities that affect both urban and rural areas, with communities of color bearing a disproportionate burden of housing cost stress and limited options.
There are only 33 affordable and available homes for every 100 renter households with extremely low incomes nationally. These numbers represent real families struggling to afford basic shelter while maintaining other necessities.
As affordable housing advocates and builders, we have the opportunity to be part of the solution. By understanding these concepts and integrating equality and justice principles into our work, we can help create communities where everyone has the opportunity to thrive in a safe, affordable rental home.
