Foreword
Most Americans spend more money on mortgage or rent payments than they do on any other budget item, including health care. An estimated 12 million renter and homeowner households now pay more than 50 percent of their annual incomes on housing, and since 2000, the number of middle-income households that spend more than half their pre-tax wages on rent has doubled. Meanwhile, there is an acute lack of affordable housing, especially rental, in the United States. (Housing is considered affordable if it costs no more than 30 percent of household income.) The number of units that rent for $400 per…
