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- Until 1950, renters outnumbered homeowners. The homeownership rate since then has steadily risen to today’s level of almost 69 percent.
Read more facts - According to researcher William Collins, “The racial gap in the home ownership rate was nearly the same in 2000 as it was in 1900, approximately 25 percentage points…it is notable that the vast majority of black-white convergence in ownership and housing values occurred before the federal Fair Housing Act and related antidiscrimination policies.”
Read more facts - When low-income families with children have high housing expenses (more than 50 percent of income), they spend 30 percent less for food, 50 percent less for clothes, and nearly 70 percent less for healthcare than their counterparts with low housing outlays.
Read more facts - From 2004 to 2006, an estimated 2,500 banks, thrifts, credit unions, and other single-family lenders made a combined $1.5 trillion in high-interest-rate subprime loans. Although subprime mortgages are only 13 percent of all mortgages, they account for 50 percent of foreclosure starts. Adjustable-rate subprime mortgages account for only six percent of mortgages but 40 percent of foreclosures.
Read more facts - It is estimated that 2.2 million families will lose or have lost their homes to foreclosure because of reckless subprime lending, including one out of every five subprime mortgages made in 2005 and 2006. The losses associated with those foreclosures, if not averted, will total $265 billion in wealth lost by American families not facing foreclosure.
Read more factsThe Case-Shiller index of home prices in 10 major metropolitan areas showed an 11.4 percent decline in home prices of the past 12 months ending January 2008. - Cooperative housing is viewed as the ideal “starter home” for a family of four earning $25,000 to $50,000 annually and can be used as a steppingstone for more-traditional homeownership forms. The United States now has more than 1.5 million units in cooperative housing communities, many of them in large metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, DC.
Read more facts - One-third of U.S. households, or more than 36 million families, rent their homes. There is no county in the country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford even a one-bedroom apartment at fair-market rents.
Read more facts - The minority share of renter households climbed from 37 percent in 1995 to 43 percent in 2005 and is expected to exceed 50 percent by 2015.
Read more facts - Manufactured housing provides affordable housing for approximately 17 million Americans. Slightly more than half of manufactured-housing occupants are employed full time and have median annual incomes less than $30,000.
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