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Updated Congressional District Profiles

Description 

In an effort to prepare its members for informed and data-driven housing advocacy, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) provides the following Congressional District Profiles. Each profile pulls from a variety of sources and illuminates several dimensions of housing affordability for renter households in each district, the surrounding area, and the state. Each profile is divided into three sections:

District

Information on the number and percent of renter households with a severe housing cost burden from the 2000 census. Also provided for each district is an estimate of the surplus/deficit of rental units affordable and available to Extremely Low Income (ELI) renter households. This figure represents the difference between the number of ELI renter households and the number of units affordable and available (not occupied by higher-income renter households) to them; a negative number indicates a deficit. (Because the State-Level Statistics, described below, are more current, district data are not provided for at-large Congressional seats or for the District of Columbia. Also, because the data are from different years and sources, district-level statistics do not sum to the state-level totals provided at the bottom of the Profiles.)

Constituent Areas

Out of Reach 2009 data for Fair Market Rent (FMR) areas partially or wholly included in the Congressional District borders. Areas are listed here if the District encompasses even a small portion of the FMR area, and they are ranked in descending order by the number of renter households. Advocates should become familiar with the Congressional District and emphasize data for the areas most relevant to the conversation at hand. Due to space limitations only the eight largest FMR areas are displayed here, but data for additional areas, as well as an explanation of the data sources and methodology, are available at http://www.nlihc.org/oor2009/.

State

Data from the 2007 American Community Survey (ACS) describing the severe housing cost burden for renters by income category. Unique to this section is information on the median housing cost to income ratio, which represents the percentage of household income spent on housing for each income category. Data on the absolute surplus/deficit of units affordable to ELI and Very Low Income (VLI) households, as well as units that are affordable and available to them (i.e., affordable units not occupied by higher-income households), are also provided. The number of these units affordable and available for every 100 households in each income category is also calculated for the state.