A new study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), Housing Spotlight: Affordable Housing is Nowhere to be Found for Millions, quantifies the gap between the supply of housing affordable (at 30% of income) and available (not occupied by higher income households) to renter households at 15%, 30%, 50% and 80% of area median income (AMI). It includes nation, state and MSA estimates. Using 2013 ACS data, it found only 31 affordable and available units for every 100 extremely low income (ELI) renter households (incomes at or below 30% of AMI) nationwide and only 17 for every 100 deeply low income renter households (incomes at or below 15% of AMI). In the Boston MSA, the gap between the number of ELI renter households and the number of affordable and available units was almost 108,000, even though Boston had the highest percentage of available and affordable ELI units among the 50 MSAs. For Massachusetts as a whole, the ELI gap was almost 162,000 units.
