Mary Ann Priester
Senior Management Analyst
Mecklenburg County Community Support Services
On January 7, 2025 Mecklenburg County Community Support Services released the 2024 State of Housing Instability and Homelessness report. This annual report compiles the most recent data on housing instability and homelessness for Charlotte-Mecklenburg by synthesizing local, regional, and national data on the full housing continuum (from housing instability to homelessness to stable, permanent, affordable housing). The SOHIH report serves as a knowledge base for all stakeholders to inform policy and practice decisions, optimize resource allocation, plan integrated systems of care, and drive advocacy efforts. The report explores three key components of the housing continuum: housing instability, homelessness, and stable housing. This blog is the first in a series of three blogs will take a deeper dive into each of these components.
This blog post takes a deeper dive into the findings from the first theme: housing instability. It also shares examples of promising practices to address housing instability.
HOUSING INSTABILITY
Housing instability includes challenges like struggling to pay rent, overcrowding, and spending too much income on housing. Households that spend over 30% of their income on housing are considered cost-burdened, making them more vulnerable to instability.
Instability can range from stable housing to homelessness and is influenced by job loss, rent increases, medical issues, or other unexpected events. Those with a history of homelessness are at greater risk of ongoing instability.
When experiencing housing instability, people often rely on friends, family, churches, or nonprofits for temporary housing, sometimes leading to overcrowding or frequent moves. Housing instability can also lead to eviction, making it harder to find affordable housing in the future.
DEFINING HOUSING INSTABILITY
Housing cost burden is a common way to measure housing instability, but it has limitations. It doesn’t capture everyone at risk, such as those living in overcrowded homes, self-pay motels, substandard housing, or facing eviction. To get a fuller picture of housing instability, other factors must also be considered.
WHAT WE KNOW
- Low-cost rental housing is disappearing.
- The local supply of low-cost rental housing has decreased significantly over the past 12 years. More than 74% of the low-cost housing stock available in 2011 was lost by 2022.
- The loss of low-cost rental housing is the result of several factors, including redevelopment, new unit construction focused on the high end of the market, rising construction costs, and rental price increases.
- There is a 27,693-unit gap in rental units affordable for extremely low-income households who are at or below 30% of Area Median Income in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
- In Mecklenburg County, there are approximately 3 extremely low-income households for everyone rental unit affordable for households with income at or below 30% AMI.
The total number of cost-burdened renters continues to increase.
- Renter cost-burden has increased among low and moderate-income households due to a lack of affordable housing and a growing rent-to-income gap. Half of Mecklenburg County renter households were cost-burdened in 2023.
- People are using a larger portion of their salary to pay rent due to higher rental prices, inflation, and higher cost of living. Most Charlotte-Mecklenburg renters earning less than $75K are cost-burdened.
- With less low-cost housing stock available, low-income households may have to rent higher-cost units that can result in cost-burden. When a lack of affordable and available rental housing stock causes households with income at or below 30% AMI to rent up, rental mismatch occurs at all AMI levels.
- A family of four at 30% of AMI, can devote $795/month toward all housing costs and there are virtually no units available in the private marketplace at that price level. Households at the 50% and 30% levels will have to rely upon either subsidies to find private apartments or public housing.
Rents continue to increase while wages remain stagnant.
- Over the last 10 years, median monthly rent has increased by 41%, yet 11% of workers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg are low wage earners earning $17/hour or less.
- This rent-wage incongruity makes it impossible for these individuals to obtain or maintain housing.
- The increasing gap between median gross rent and low-income wages leads to housing instability, especially for households with the lowest income.
- Contributing over 30% of income to housing expenses makes it more difficult contribute to or pay for expenses related to emergency or unexpected expenses, health and wellness activities, potential childcare costs, or incidental or personal items.
PROMISING PRACTICES: HOUSING INSTABILITY
Addressing housing instability requires both immediate and long-term solutions. Key strategies include:
- Expanding Affordable Housing: Build more affordable homes, preserve existing low-cost housing, and provide rental assistance or vouchers.
- Preventing Evictions: Offer emergency rent aid, ongoing support, and legal assistance to resolve landlord-tenant disputes.
- Improving Housing Quality: Help low-income homeowners with repairs, ensure rentals meet safety standards, and support energy efficiency upgrades.
- Providing Support Services: Connect at-risk households with case management and essential resources.
Using these strategies, communities can reduce housing instability and ensure access to safe, affordable housing.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER
The increasing cost of housing, diminishing affordable housing options, particularly for low-income renters, and a high proportion of people who have little to no income contribute to rates of housing instability and homelessness and if a household does become homeless, how long their homelessness lasts. Strategic alignment, shared responsibility, diverse funding sources, and targeted resources and interventions are needed to strengthen local housing continuum resource capacity and reduce systemic barriers to housing to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring and that all households have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing.
The 2024 SoHIH report and all complementary material can be found on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing & Homelessness Dashboard.
Stay tuned for future blog posts, which will take a deeper dive into the other key findings from the 2024 SoHIH report.
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