CT Public | By: Abigail Brone
Only a third of Connecticut’s extremely low-income families can find affordable rental homes.
Extremely low-income is a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designation for families earning below 30% of the area’s median income (AMI). Connecticut has nearly 150,000 extremely low-income households.
Connecticut needs to build more deeply affordable housing, targeting extremely low income renters, said Chelsea Ross, executive director of local housing advocacy nonprofit Partnership for Strong Communities..
“Two-thirds of people are going to have to pay more,” Ross said. “They’re going to have to be cost burdened. They’re going to double up. They’re going to experience homelessness. They’re going to have some sort of instability.”
A recent study, called The Gap report, published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, shows the majority of these tenants are spending more than half of their monthly income on rent.