Regional Changes in the Affordability of Renting an Apartment (2005-2014)

Previously I have posted about the "long and the short" of owning and renting regionally. The American Communities Survey data now lets us look at that trend over the last decade (2005 to 2014) and in this post I wanted to look at the affordability of renting an apartment in the region.

The percentage of the regional population living in apartments is hardly static. In fact it has grown pretty substantially in the last decade. As seen below, while around a quarter of the regional population were apartment dwellers in 2005, last year  almost one in three (32%) opted for living in an apartment.

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Apartment living, and the percent of the population who now occupy an apartment, has increased steadily over this period. Whereas some 70,000 people lived in apartments in 2005, as many as 90,000 do now.

Given this growth in apartment living, affordability is something that comes to mind - are people able to find affordable apartments based on their income? HUD defines affordable rental housing on the basis that a household should spend no more than 30% of its income on rent. Fortunately the ACS lets us break out the costs of rent by household income. For the most part, very few apartment based households with incomes in excess of $50,000 find themselves spending 30% or more for rent. As a general rule, fewer than 5% of this upper income apartment dwellers spend 30% or more of their income on rent. For them this pattern varies very little over the past decade.

However, those with incomes of less than  $50,000 find themselves facing a different trend. Below is a chart showing the percent of renters paying 30% or more for rent over the past ten years broken into three household income groups: those making less than $20,000 per year; those making from $20,000 to $34,999, and those making from $35,000 to $49,999.

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Two things should be apparent from this graph.

First, the less income you have the more likely you are to spend 30% or more on rent. Typically four out of every 5 households in the "under $20,000 income" bracket continually have to spend 30% or more of their income on housing.

Second, affordability is a growing issue for those in the lower-middle income brackets. While those in the lowest income bracket (under $20,000) have seen a slight increase in the percentage of renters struggling with affordability in the last decade (less than .7% increase per year), those making anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 have seen their numbers grow by 2.1% annually - three times that of the lowest income group!

This has resulted in a doubling (2X) of the percentage of renters who make $20,000 to $34,999 that pay 30% or more of their income for rent, and a quintupling (5X) of renters who have household incomes of $35,000 to $49,999 that now pay 30% or more for rent.

As more ACS data becomes available it will be interesting to see if this pattern changes.

Single Family Housing Units as Rentals: 1970 Versus 2013

A recent article by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard suggest that more and more single family homes are being used as rentals than ever before."The recent growth of single-family rentals is unprecedented," reports the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Looking at local housing data seems to bear this out. Below is a graphic showing how, since 1970, we have seen a regional grow in overall housing stock (12%), and more specifically an increase in single family housing units (21%). At the same time the region has experienced an increase the number of renters (up 15%).

More to the point, there has been a very large jump in the number of renters that are occupying single family homes (attached or detached). Renters in single family homes have jumped from around 6,400 in 1970 to more than 9.200 in 2013, and increase of about 45% !

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National, State, and Local Households Spending 30% or More on Rent

A quick look at the percent of households that spend 30% or more of their income on rent for the US, New York State, and the Herkimer-Oneida Counties Region. Note that the hatched areas are the percent that spend more than HALF of their household income on rent !

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The Long and Short of Owning and Renting Regionally

One of the things I have been trying to take a look at are the longer terms trends in our area by using older data sets (i.e. old census files) and comparing them to newer ACS data. There are, of course, limitations - changing definitions confound these efforts as much as the lack of data sometimes does !

That aside, I was able to assemble some information on housing tenure I thought was interesting, allowing for some comparisons between short versus long term home owners (those that have owned their homes for 10 years or less versus those that have owned them for more than 20 years), as well as short versus long term renters (those that have been in the same apartment five or less years versus those that have lived in the same apartment 10 or more years).

Looking at the patterns since the 1970 Census, you can see how there has been a decline in both Herkimer and Oneida Counties in "new" owners. In both counties we find that the percent of home owners that have been in their current home for 10 or less years has dropped - from about 42% to 36% in Herkimer County between 1970 and 2010, and from 45% to 39% in Oneida County over the same time period.

Herkimer County Home Owners 1970 to 2010

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Oneida County Home Owners 1970 to 2010

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At the same time, there has been an increase in the percentage of home owners that have stayed in their homes for the long haul - namely those that have lived at the same address in excess of the past 20 years. In Herkimer County the percentage rose from around 34% to 39% and in Oneida County it went from 29% to 39% over the last 40 years.

We find a somewhat opposite trend (albeit a small one) when looking at apartment dwellers in both counties. In both Herkimer and Oneida Counties we find slightly more people renting in the short run (in this case the shortest period I could measure in all 5 censuses was the prior 10 years so keep that in mind!), and slightly fewer people in life long rentals of, say more than 20 years.

Herkimer County Apartment Dwellers 1970 to 2010

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Oneida County Apartment Dwellers 1970 to 2010

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Since there are limitations in getting  at the older data, I wanted to try to learn a little more about those people that own and rent right now, as opposed to the past. To do this I delved into the ACS 2012 Five Year Estimates for the two PUMAs that make up the majority of the two county region.

First, looking at home owners, there was some interesting comparisons to be found among the family types and their participation in the workforce. Regionally the data suggest that newer home owners are more reliant on having two working people in the home than those that have been established in their homes for a couple decades. And single working parents make up about 18% of new home owners, versus only 8% of established owners. The large 40% slice of the pie labeled "others" for people that have owned their home more than 20 years is mostly people not in the workforce. This is likely retirees and older economically established citizens.

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This is somewhat confirmed when we examine households with children present among new versus established home owners.

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As can be readily seen, people who have owned their homes for more than 20 years are far less likely to have any children, let alone young children under the age of 6, present. These long term home owners are generally free from the types of family obligations that younger home owners find themselves dealing with. In addition, they are often free of their mortgages as well. As seen below, only four out of every ten longer term home owners still are paying a mortgage, versus eight out of ten among owners who have been in their house for less than 10 years.

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When we look at employment data with renters, one piece that seems to leap out its the increased demand that single working parents place on rental properties versus those owning homes. More than 40% of short term renters (those who have only been renting for 5 or less years) are single working parents. Among long term renters more than a quarter (26%) are single parents with jobs. This is two to three times as large a percent as in the case of home owners.

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Just as was the case with home owners, short term renters are more likely to have children, and especially younger children under the age of 6, present in the household. Nearly one out of five people (19%) who have been renting for less than five years have children under the age of 6 present in the household - this is identical to their compatriots who are "new" home owners. And similarly, longer term renters are far less likely to have young children in the home.

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Affordable housing is something that impacts renters especially hard. HUD defines affordable rental housing on the basis that a household should spend no more than 30% of its income on rent. In our region, nearly HALF of all renters, long and short term, spend more than 30% of their income on rent. And more than one in five spend as much as 50% of their income to pay rent for their apartment.

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To get some sense of what that income is, the chart below shows the median household and family incomes for long and short term renters, as well as long and short term home owners.

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