Revealed: 93% of districts in major US cities unaffordable to Black residents

The National Equity Atlas, a research initiative focused on racial and economic equity, compared rents and wages in the 100 most populous American metropolitan regions in 2019 and examined whether the majority of households of different racial groups made enough income to afford median market rents in their neighborhoods.

The findings, published on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, paint a bleak picture of both severe racial inequality and a growing shortage of affordable housing in cities across the US. The authors found that:

The crisis was particularly acute in California, which has some of the least affordable housing in the nation and a humanitarian homelessness disaster.

Ten California metro areas had no zip codes that were affordable to low-income renters or Black renters in 2019. The Riverside area, east of Los Angeles, was the only major metro region in California that had any neighborhoods affordable to low-income people. That region is one of the most polluted in the nation, and even there, only 14 zip codes were affordable in 2019, a sharp decrease from 2013.

Research in LA has repeatedly found that families are living in overcrowded homes in immigrant and Latinx neighborhoods.

That trend played out in a majority of regions, the study concluded. Out of the 100 metro areas, 81 saw a decrease in affordability, 16 saw no change, and only three had moderate increases: Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Madison, Wisconsin; and Wichita, Kansas. All metro areas had zero zip codes affordable to very low-income households or people making less than 50% of the median income.

The researchers based their analysis on housing data from the real estate site Zillow and income figures from the US census, and looked at the changes from 2013 to 2019, the latest available data.

By using median incomes and median rents to determine whether a zip code was affordable, the authors noted, the research illustrated the challenges facing households searching for available rentals, as opposed to the cost of all existing housing units in the region. Neighborhoods they deemed unaffordable still had some affordable rentals, but they were not plentiful.

The authors urged local governments to protect vulnerable renters by creating permanent eviction protections and rental assistance programs. Cities should also prioritize preserving and expanding affordable housing units in gentrifying neighborhoods, so that when low-income renters are displaced from their homes, there are other options in their communities, the researchers wrote. They cited ongoing efforts in Rhode Island, Virginia and Missouri to invest federal money into housing trust funds meant to maintain and build units for low-income tenants.