Housing Cost Burden Definition
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When a household spends more than 30% of their income on housing, the household is housing cost burdened.
When a household spends more than 50% of their income on housing, the household is extremely housing cost burdened. |
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Of 69,420 households in these municipalities:
A total of 23,218 households are cost-burdened in Evanston, Lincolnwood, Skokie, and Wilmette combined! |
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As to be expected, households with the most housing cost burden have the lowest incomes, with annual salaries that are below $35,000. |
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The Impact of Housing Cost Burden
Housing Cost Burden's Impact on Adults
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Housing cost burden creates scarcity since people who are cost-burdened can't afford that much. As anyone can imagine, living in scarcity is stressful. |
The stress of scarcity can change a person's cognitive functioning and hormone levels. These changes can affect a person's sleep and lead to distractions in their day-to-day lives. |
When people live in scarcity, they tend to worry most about meeting basic needs: food, water, shelter, safety, etc. Over time, these changes affect one’s ability to function—affecting one’s health and might even influence substance abuse to cope with the added stress. |
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Scarcity eventually begins to affect people's relationships, which can get exacerbated and lead to divorce and domestic violence. |
These changes can affect a person’s performance and productivity at work (showing up late, missing work, investing less time and energy into work, etc.), which could lead to loss of employment. At this point, a person's ability to make long-term decisions or goals are also inhibited. |
Obviously, loss of employment can lead to loss of income. Since housing is usually most people's biggest expense, losing a source of income can lead to people losing their homes via foreclosures and evictions, which can damage their credit, deplete any savings, etc. In some cases, this situation can prompt people into committing crimes of poverty (theft, burglarly, etc.) for basic survival. Then, committing crime can lead to incarceration. |
All of this, eventually, can lead to homelessness—the ultimate loss of equity.
Housing Cost Burden's Impact on Children
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The impact on children is perhaps even greater than adults. |
When parents struggle with scarcity, children are significantly affected by parental stress and deterioration, frequent moves, deprivation, and the stigma of poverty. |
Children experience scarcity, health, and relationship issues similarly to adults. Compared to adults, kids living with housing cost burden are impacted at school: poor attendance and academic performance, problems with concentrating, behavioral issues, conflicts with other kids, etc. |
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A child's response to parental stress and domestic violence can include finding other support networks. |
Seeking alternative networks of support can lead children to danger because these networks can be gangs, leading to juvenile crime and youth violence. Some children may even run away from home under stressful circumstances. |
Since the potential for college and obtaining stable and higher-income employment in adulthood decrease from lower achievement and performance, growing up with housing cost burden can ultimately decrease a child's ability to meet the potential they started out with. This starts with cognitive delays, then leads to lower academic achievements, and results in an overall decrease in potential income a child can make. |
All of this ultimately leads to chronic homelessness or incarceration as well.
Housing Cost Burden's Impact on the Community
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These impacts on individuals have an impact on the community, both in direct and non-direct costs. |
People struggling with cumulative problems that are caused by housing cost burden often end up needing to rely on emergency and social services. These have a tangible, measurable cost to the overall community. A person who is chronically homeless and living on the streets costs the community an average of $35,578 a year in ER visits, hospitalizations, police involvement, shelter stays, social services, etc. |
Most housing cost-burdened people won’t cost the community that much money, but the number of people who need any of these services are astronomical. Opportunity costs are the real heart-breaker because they deal with childen's decreased potential to succeed and individuals have less capacity to meet their potential as employees and citizens. Specific numbers, as it relates to affordable housing, aren't available, but we know that the lack of affordable housing throughout the community is one of the leading drivers behind ongoing segregation and discrimination. |
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