For Renters, Housing Cost Burden Is About the Same

The housing cost burden has eased for U.S. homeowners but remained stagnant for renters since the peak of the recession in 2008.

Recently released data from the American Community Survey (ACS) estimates the percentage of “burdened” households, or those that spend at least 35% of their monthly income on housing costs and provides a 10-year look at the trends from 2008 to 2018.

Burden Depends on Mortgage Status

There were 77.7 million owner-occupied housing units in the United States in 2018. Approximately 62% of these homeowners had a mortgage, down 6.5 percentage points from 2008.

For the purposes of this analysis, a burdened owner-occupied household is one where the homeowner spends 35% or more of their monthly household income on mortgage payments, utility bills, real estate taxes, property insurance, and any required condominium or mobile home fees.

In 2018, 20.9% of homeowners with a mortgage were burdened. That’s down about eight percentage points from 10 years prior when 28.8% of homeowners with a mortgage were burdened.

Housing costs also eased slightly for homeowners without a mortgage or who own their homes free and clear.  

According to the ACS, even without a mortgage payment, 11.0% of these households were burdened in 2018, compared with 12.0% in 2008.

Renters Still Burdened

The picture wasn’t quite as bright for the nation’s 43.8 million renters. An estimated 40.6% of rental unit residents spent 35% or more of their monthly household income on rent and utility bills last year. That’s a dip of only 0.2 percentage points from 2008 when 40.8% of renters were burdened.

Housing Burden in Metro Areas

Changes at the metro area level followed a similar trend as the nation.

Some highlights:

–In 2008, there were 43 metro areas where at least 40% of homeowners with a mortgage were burdened. There were none in 2018.

–In 2018, 53 metro areas reported that over 10% of homeowners without a mortgage were burdened, compared with 85 metro areas in 2008.

–The number of metro areas where more than 40% of renters were burdened in 2018 was 81, the same amount as a decade earlier.

SOURCE: Christopher Mazur,Census Bureau, based on American Community Survey data.

 64% of Americans Want Stricter Laws on Gun Sales

Nearly two in three Americans say that laws covering the sale of firearms should be made stricter (64%), while 28% say the laws should be kept as they are. Few Americans (7%) would like the laws to be made less strict.

These data are from Gallup’s annual Crime poll, conducted Oct. 1-13. Americans’ desire for stricter gun laws was greatest in 1991 — at 78% — when Gallup first fielded the question, but this view ebbed over the following two decades, bottoming out at 43% in 2011.

There was a spike to 58% in desires for stricter firearm sales laws in 2012, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, but figures returned to the 47% to 49% range for several years. Since 2015, however, support for stricter laws has registered at the majority level, peaking at 67% in March of last year after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting.

U.S. Democrats’ desires for stricter laws on firearms sales have increased gradually since 2001 from a solid majority to the point that roughly nine in 10 favor such laws. Over the same period, Republican support has declined from just over 40% to just under that level — with several dips below 30% during that period, including 23% support in 2013 after the post-Sandy Hook spike of 2012 that occurred across all party groups faded.

The effect of the long-term changes is that Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on gun laws have grown more polarized, stretching from a 17-percentage-point gap in 2001 to more than 50 points since 2017.

Meanwhile, political independents’ views have been somewhere in the middle over the years, with the current 64% the highest Gallup has measured for independents to date.

Support for a National Ban on Handguns Remains Low

Gallup also asks Americans whether they would support a ban on the possession of handguns for all people except police. Support for such a law was most popular in 1959, when Gallup first asked the question and 60% favored it. But support waned tremendously in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 23% in 2016.

Support for a national handgun ban has increased slightly since then, with the current 29% on the high end of the 23% to 29% range recorded over the past decade.

Party Differences on Handgun Ban Have Also Widened

Like their views on stricter firearm laws, Democrats’ and Republicans’ levels of support for a national handgun ban have also widened — though not as appreciably — in comparison with the early 2000s, mainly because Republicans have become even less likely to favor this proposal. The current 34 points separating Democrats’ (44%) and Republicans’ (10%) support for a ban on handguns is the largest gap recorded between 2000 and 2019.

Though Democrats have been more supportive of such a ban than independents and Republicans, support for a national handgun ban among Democrats has reached majority level only once: in 2004, at 52%.

The current percentage of independents (30%) who support a national ban is the highest it has been since 2005. Meanwhile, Republicans’ current 10% matches this group’s lowest level of support recorded in the trend so far.

The current slate of Democratic presidential candidates unanimously support background checks for gun purchases, which could address a widespread desire for stricter laws on sales — especially among the Democratic faithful. Still, barring a sudden change of heart by Trump, it appears the only chance that gun laws will be stiffened in the foreseeable future is if a Democrat takes the White House in 2020 and signs legislation that a Democratic-controlled Congress passes.

An outright ban on handguns, however, is not popular and hasn’t been for a long time. Though no candidate has proposed such a ban, Americans’ widespread opposition to it does show that there are boundaries to the extent of gun restrictions the public wants to see passed.

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