Dayton rent consumes too much income for some residents

Some Dayton residents are spending more money than they should on rent, which can leave too little money left over for important expenses such as health care, food and other basic necessities, according to a new housing report.

RELATED: Want to afford a two-bedroom rental in Dayton area? You need to make more than $14.50 an hour

For every 100 extreme low-income renter households in the Dayton metro area, there are 36 affordable and available rental units, according to a report released this week by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

That means the Dayton metro area is short more than 22,000 affordable and available units for extremely low-income residents, the report states.

The report shows an increasing shortage of rental housing that Dayton’s poorest residents can afford, said Marcus Roth, communications development director for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.

In 2007, there were 43 affordable units for every 100 extremely low-income Dayton residents, he said.

The imbalance between supply and demand for affordable housing puts renters in a tight spot.

A general rule of thumb is that people should not pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.

But more than two-thirds of extremely low-income renter households in the Dayton area have severe cost burdens, which means they are spending more than half their income on rent, the report states.

The average renter in the Dayton region earns about $12.59 per hour, according to a separate report by the coalition. That’s less than the $14.69 needed to comfortably afford a two-bedroom home.

Households with severe rent burdens spend 75 percent less on health care than similar poor families with affordable rent and 40 percent less on food, said Diane Yentel, National Low Income Housing Coalition president and CEO.

RELATED: Half of Dayton area renters spend ‘too much’ on rent

And it’s not just the extremely poor who are shouldering heavier-than-advisable housing cost burdens.

This newspaper previously report that about 47 percent of renters in the Dayton metro area paid 30 percent or more of their income on housing.

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