Residents of Los Angeles use a larger portion of their paycheck for housing than people in San Francisco, New York or Miami. “They’re bottom earners living in a high-priced housing market,” said Dowell Myers, a policy, planning and demographics professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Lower-income households are moving to converted garages or to distant suburbs where the drive to work is more hours on the freeway. As Harvard University’s Joint Center on Housing Studies tells MHProNews, at least half of the area’s households spend 30 percent of their income on housing, including utilities and property taxes, the highest among U. S. metro areas. Thirty percent is the divide between “affordability” and “cost burdened,” according to bloombergnews.com.

Renters suffer the most, says Zillow, Inc. (Z), with rents averaging 48 percent of the area’s median income, more than any other city. LA also has the lowest rate of home ownership of the 50 largest metro areas, according to U. S. Census data. Meanwhile, driven by rising housing costs, the city has received over 17,500 complaints of garages converted into illegal residences over the past ten years, often to provide for family members who cannot afford their own home, although in June a federal appeals court judge reversed LA’s ordinance barring people from living in vehicles on the street. New subsidized housing is negligible, communities are resistant to new projects, and 88 separate cities within LA County each have their own regulations regarding housing, leading to a lack of residential options. MHProNews understands stagnant income growth is also a prominent factor as rental costs and home prices continue to rise. While land availability is understandably at a premium in the LA area, manufactured housing could play a role in reducing housing costs for those who are suffering the most in the housing market. ##

(Editor’s Note: The Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing study can be found as part of a commentary in Industry Voices linked here.)

(Image credit: rentdirect.com)