Using Fees and Taxes to Promote Affordable Housing

Abstract

The inability of many low- and moderate-income families to locate decent shelter, combined with the decline in federal housing assistance during the 1980s, has placed the housing affordability issue high on the local government agenda. Using an affordability index varying by income level and household size and type, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute indicates that nearly one-third of the nation is persistently “shelter poor.” See M. Stone, One-Third of a Nation: A New Look at Housing Affordability in America (1990). The problem is especially acute among renters and large families. The renter households paying 25 percent or more of their income on rent increased from 36.5 percent in 1970 to 57.5 percentin 1987, with 57 percent of those families withthree or more persons unable to meet nonshelter needs at minimum levels of adequacy because of rent payments. Id. at 32.