Housing Cost Burdens Across Congressional Districts

While the lack of affordable housing dominates the headlines across the nation, congressional districts with higher shares of renter households are disproportionately affected by the current affordability crisis. Geographically, the districts with the largest housing cost burdens are heavily concentrated in California, Florida, and the coastal Northeast.

Buoyed by significant home equity gains and locked in by below-market mortgages rates, current home owners are in a more advantageous financial position to weather the growing affordability crisis. At the same time, renters are facing the worst affordability on record. According to the latest 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), more than half of all renter households, or 23 million, spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing, and therefore are considered burdened by housing costs. Among home owners, the share of households that are cost burdened is less than a quarter (24%). Nevertheless, this amounts to 20.6 million owner households who experience housing cost burdens. As a result, congressional districts where housing markets are dominated by renters are more likely to register higher overall shares of households with cost burdens.

In a typical congressional district, about a third of all households, renters and owners combined, experience housing cost burdens. In contrast, in the ten congressional districts with the highest burden rates, more than half of all households spend 30% or more of their income on housing.

The highest burden rates are found in five districts each in California and New York and two in Florida (see the chart above). In New York’s 15^th and 13^th, 55% and 52% of households, respectively, are burdened with housing costs. The vast majority of these households are renters, as reflected by the low homeownership rates in these districts, 16% and 13%, respectively. Similarly, the remaining top 10 districts with the highest shares of burdened households have homeownership rates well below the national average of 65%. On the list, only Florida’s 20^th and 24^th have homeownership rates that exceed 50%. Since congressional districts are drawn to represent roughly the same number of people, higher shares typically translate into larger counts of cost burdened households. To capture any remaining differences, the size of the bubbles in the chart correlates with the overall number of burdened households.

On the rental side, nine out of eleven worst burdened districts are in Florida. Close to two thirds of renters in Florida’s 26^th, 20^th, 25^th and 19^th are burdened with housing costs. The renter burden rates are similarly high in Florida’s 28^th, 21^st, 24^th, 13^th, and 23^rd, where the shares of housing cost burdened renters are between 63% and 64%. Only California’s 27^th and 29^th register slightly higher burden shares exceeding 64%. At the other end of the spectrum is Wisconsin’s 7^th, where just a third of renter households experience housing cost burdens.

Florida, New York, and California stand out for simultaneously having congressional districts with the highest shares of cost burdened renters and owners. The heaviest owner burden rates dozen consists of five congressional districts in New York and California each and two in Florida. In New York’s 9^th and 8^th districts, 43% and 42% of home owners, respectively, spend 30% of more of their income on housing. While high property taxes contribute heavily to owners’ burden in New York and California, fast rising insurance premiums strain home owners’ budgets in Florida.

The list of congressional districts with the lowest ownership burden rates include Alabama’s 5^th, West Virginia’s 1^st and 2^nd, North Dakota’s at-Large, South Carolina’s 4^th, Indiana’s 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th, Arkansas 3^rd, Tennessee’s 2^nd, Missouri’s 3^rd and 6^th. Less than 17% of home owners in these districts spend 30% of their income or more on housing.

Additional housing data for your congressional district are provided by the US Census Bureau here.