October 28, 2020
People looking to find affordable housing in Gainesville have had an increasingly difficult time doing so over the past decade. But never before has the city's affordable housing situation faced a stumbling block like the novel coronavirus that has been wreaking havoc across the planet.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, housing is officially categorized as a "cost burden" when it takes up at least 30% of one's income. And according to a report from the Independent Florida Alligator, Gainesville is at the center of the cost burden problem.
Citing data from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, the Alligator reveals that the state of Florida has the highest cost burden rate of any state in the country at 54.1%. And nowhere is the problem more prominent than in Gainesville. The Alligator's report states that the Alachua county seat has a cost burden rate of nearly two thirds (65%).
Anne Ray, the manager of the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse at the center, says that low wages- in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic- are part of what's responsible for this. “Wages have not gone up very much for people working in traditionally lower paying jobs,” she said. “And housing costs really have gotten more expensive.”
