852,000 units deteriorated to the point of inadequacy. That is,
for every 1,000 units of inadequate housing removed from the stock,
852 newly inadequate units were added. The Joint Center for Housing
Studies of Harvard University has concluded that the number of
renters living in inadequate housing grew by 200,000 between 1974
and 1981. The real income erosion among the poor and the loss of
federal rehabilitation subsidies suggest that housing quality will
continue to deteriorate in the future.
Rural
Housing
Rural housing
deserves special mention because the dynamics of housing
deprivation in rural communities are often counter to those in
cities. For instance, affordability is the dominant problem in
urban areas, but quality is the major issue in rural locations. The
quality of rural housing is the worst in the nation, with almost
one-fourth of the rural poor living in dilapidated units. In
addition, rural household income is uniformly lower than that of
urban households. This problem has been exacerbated by the deep
depression in the agricultural sector over the past few years.
Rural housing is generally more affordable than urban housing,
however, as Table 5 indicates.
Besides their
problems of poverty, rural areas lack the banking services that are
taken for granted in most cities. For instance, over 25 percent of
all rural counties were without a savings and loan institution in
1980. Federal support for rural housing is administered by the
Farmer's Home Administration
(fm
ha). Two programs are especially important: the "502"
homeownership program and the "515" rental program. Both provide
fifty-year, one-percent mortgages to for-profit or not-for-profit
developers,