Housing Cost Burden - Children in Virginia

Virginia

Safe and stable housing is an important social determinant of health and well-being. Guidelines suggest households should spend no more than 30% of their monthly income on housing. Spending more can make it difficult to afford other fundamentals such as adequate health insurance, healthy foods, utility bills and reliable transportation. Housing has become less affordable as rental costs have risen more quickly than incomes. Between 2001 and 2019, median rent increased by 15%, but median renter household income rose only 3.4% over the same period.

Families that struggle to afford housing may face eviction, foreclosure and homelessness. Households with housing instability are exposed to increased stress that affects physical and mental health.

Living in a severely cost-burdened household, meaning housing costs exceed 50% of household income, is associated with lower math and reading scores in children. Once housing costs exceed 60% of a family’s income, cognitive achievement declines steeply.

The prevalence of cost-burdened households with children is higher among:

• Renters than homeowners. Renters also historically have lower incomes than homeowners.
• Black and Hispanic households compared with white households.

Research shows that public housing is associated with immediate and significant reductions in housing cost burden on households with children. Reducing housing costs allows families to use their income on other valuable items such as food, school and job-related expenses.

The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends tenant-based housing vouchers to help those with low incomes pay rent.

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit, designed respectively to benefit low- to moderate-income workers and households with children, have been shown to improve long-term health outcomes, educational attainment and future earnings for recipients. Expansions for both credits went into effect in 2021, and are expected to raise 4 million of children above the poverty line.

Healthy People 2030 has a goal to reduce the proportion of families that spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. 2022. “America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2022.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren21/.

Gold, Sarah. 2020. “Does Public Housing Reduce Housing Cost Burden among Low-Income Families with Children?” Journal of Children and Poverty 26 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10796126.2019.1682754.

Marr, Chuck, Kris Cox, and Arloc Sherman. 2021. “Recovery Package Should Permanently Include Families With Low Incomes in Full Child Tax Credit.” Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/recovery-package-should-permanently-include-families-with-low-incomes-in-full.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. Edited by Greg Duncan and Suzanne Le Menestrel. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25246.

Newman, Sandra, and C. Scott Holupka. 2016. “Housing Affordability And Children’s Cognitive Achievement.” Health Affairs 35 (11): 2092–99. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0718.