This post summarizes a paper, authored by me and my Constituent Services director, Regina Fink, on how the Census reports rent burden. The paper was just published in Cityscape. Cityscape is the journal of HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research. Cityscape’s mission is to “deliver high quality, original research on housing and community development.”
The paper highlights (a) the importance of including data from housing agencies when assessing housing need and (b) the lack of affordable housing for lower-wage earners. Many lower-wage earners in my district are forced to live in over-crowded households that are unstable and uncomfortable. The paper grows out of my work on housing affordability and my related work on the Census as Chair of the Senate’s Census Committee.
Most publications about housing need rely on Census data and fail to consider administrative agency data. The paper, titled “Divergence of Survey Data from Administrative Data as to Housing Need,” makes a fundamental methodological point: When we are assessing rent burden (the share of household income devoted to rent) in a region, we should never rely on Census data alone, but should always also look at the administrative data available from public agencies about the housing subsidies that they provide. Administrative data, which are heavily audited by housing agencies, diverge widely from Census data, which are based on people filling out forms without direct supervision or support.
The Census does a poor job of measuring rent burden because it does not ask about housing subsidy and also because, among the lowest and highest income households, Census income reporting is often inaccurate. Census income statistics are derived from the American Community Survey, a survey which is administered to a sample of households every year. It is unsurprising that the income data from this survey is problematic — the survey form is lengthy and requests numbers for income in specific categories, numbers that most people do not have at their finger tips. My constituents who happen to end up in the ACS sample call me from time to time wondering if the form is legitimate and why they have to come up with the detailed information.
The paper also has a substantive implication: Massachusetts is doing a better job than the Census suggests in meeting the needs of our lowest income households — the “Extremely Low Income Households,” often households who are reliant on income support like SSI or TAFDC, including many with a disability. A single person household in the “Extremely Low Income” category in the Boston area is surviving on under $36,000 per year in 2026 — less than 30% of the Area Median Income. However, many of those households are receiving rent subsidies that are not reflected in the Census, so although they appear to be rent-burdened in the Census, they are not actually rent-burdened.
At the same time, Massachusetts is doing a worse job than the Census suggests in meeting the needs of working people of limited income, the so-called “Very” as opposed to “Extremely” low income group. In 2026, the “Very Low Income” single person, at 30% to 50% of the Area Median Income, is making between $36,000 and $60,000. The VLI category includes people working 40 hours a week at up to $30 per hour.
Census-based measurements of housing availability for the VLI population fail to recognize that subsidized housing programs allocate units primarily to the Extremely Low Income population. As a result, the VLI population is excluded from many housing units that appear in Census data as affordable to them. The finding of underestimated need for the VLI population resonates with what I hear from my constituents. Many of my constituents are unable to afford housing on their own and so are forced to join over-crowded, unstable households. My own daughter moved through several uncomfortable group housing situations in Brighton, finally gave up and moved home, then moved to Portland, Maine, then moved further out in Maine to find housing that she could afford.
Meeting the housing needs of lower-income working people is our central housing challenge. The VLI gap in our housing programs makes other forms of support for the VLI population all the more important. Importantly, at this time of federal cuts, we need to protect MassHealth and the Health Connector.
I hope our research findings help focus attention on this challenge. I look forward to holding future hearings on how our findings affect housing need assessments in Massachusetts.
“Go west young man.” – H. Greeley
Greater Boston is an historic area and ill-suited for sedentary growth. It is not healthy in any way, shape, or form.
Great research..well done. great points.
Pres. Biden and “Border Czar” VP Harris let in around 15 million illegals during their tenure.
This huge influx of illegals has obviously put demand (and hence pricing) pressure on the lower end of the housing market.
US citizens are paying for this in the form of higher housing costs.
(Had Harris been elected president in 2024, she would have let in another 15 million illegals in her first term and 15 million more in her second term).
This is not to mention these “migrants'” pressure on medical costs and public school costs for their children.
Democrats don’t like to talk about any of this because it’s an “inconvenient truth,” as Al Gore might put it.
Check your facts:
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/role-recent-immigrant-surge-housing-costs
Agreed
The Democrats have found profit in the destruction of our Republic.
The Biden/Harris team stopped more than 3.3 million illegal entries at the border and sent them back to Mexico. The Trump/Pence team stopped and returned only about 400,000. Draw your own conclusions as to who allowed “open borders.” Btw: there were never more than 14 million undocumented immigrants in the entire country at any given time. The sheer logistical impossibility of bringing that many –plus an extra million to make up your imaginary “15 million” total– into the country during Biden’s 4-year term, should tell you how ridiculous the idea is. Every bus, train, airplane, taxi, car, scooter and donkey in the entire nation would have had to be carrying “illegals” up into the various states, and then would have had to turn around and immediately gone back for more. And so forth, 24/7. Of course that never happened.
Kenneth,
Wittingly, or unwittingly, you’re playing the DNCNN’s game of conflate categories. I mentioned this previously.
The previous cabal administering our Executive Branch incentivized, aided and abetted a mass migration of illegals, a flesh army if you will, aimed at the heart of our Republic: the census, and one man, one vote. Should the Electoral College fall, so shall the Republic and the Constitution will be a dead letter to be cut and pasted by whomever holds the biggest megaphone.
I’d been a Democrat for thirty years with a raging case of TDS. I will set-aside my feelings about the return of the “spoils system” as it energizes and revitalizes the “Decider Branch,” the “Make it So Branch.”
President Trump is not god, but he is doing god’s work. We won the Cold War and the flowers of our victory are in bloom and the fruits are ripe.
And if the term “god’s work” turns you off, then PresidentTrump is doing the work of history and paying the debt of all the blood of our men and women spilt for our nation, not to pass to the other side of one war, or another, but to endure into the next millennia and beyond.
Hi Fred. Good to hear from you again. Have you ever considered going into politics? You have a definite flair for articulating what the good-ol’-boys want to hear, in certain parts of the country. Mr. Trump would certainly give you his stamp of approval.
I’m heartened “the good ‘ol boys” want to hear vanilla conservatism, republicanism.
Hi Kenneth, I have considered not going into politics.
Hello Fred. Good to hear from you again. Whenever I want to understand the pro-Trump mindset in its pure undiluted form, I read through some of your comments. No one else expresses it so directly and forcefully. I’m sure Trump himself would be favorably impressed.
Sorry about the unintended duplication of my reply. I was undecided about how, exactly, to phrase it. Inadvertently added a second version while erroneously thinking that I had failed to send the first one. The world of digital communications is still a bit new to me.
‘Sall good man.
Hi Kenneth,
I am glad you walk in the rarified air of people who want to understand a “pro-Trump mindset.” The vast majority of people have their minds obediently and fearfully closed to what is simply the expression of basic American values.
I would have to parse and expand upon the “pro-Trump mindset” a tad though. I am not afraid to laud the many things he is right about, and give him a little grace for the unconventional energies he brings to the Office.
Falling asleep during cabinet meetings is certainly a demonstration of unconventional energies.
Dee’s comments should get an award for uncreative fiction.
Thanks for the info. Interesting work. In my work at a community health center, it is often the case with benefits, that the low wage earners don’t meet the very strict criteria to get support, as the tendency of many is to be more afraid that a few less deserving people will benefit from a program, than in providing real help to the workers in our cities and towns. Not to mention all the additional billions of dollars of tax payers’ money that’s now being directed to military and military-adjacent parts of the government, that could cover so many services, including housing support, child care, health care coverage and more for millions of Americans….
Dee, “Illegals” is a very loose and inaccurate term. You talk of US citizens; however, many of those whom you would call “illegal” are working, have social security numbers and pay into the system. You had better define what you mean because the number of people with no documentation is low. The people washing dishes, paving streets, manning car washes, and picking fruit, for a few examples, are mostly documented and legal. And I wonder, Dee, if you would consider doing the work they do for us.
No, Janet, none of them would. Ask any farmer: how many blonde-haired, blue-eyed, working-age anglophones with a valid US birth certificate have ever applied for stoop-labor jobs in the fields. Or…if any of them actually submitted an application and got hired…how many have stayed on that job for the entire growing, harvesting, or processing season. The farmer will burst out laughing. In several of the big agricultural states, studies have found that 50% or more –sometimes considerably more– of the seasonal agricultural workforce is both migrant and undocumented. If all those folks get deported, America will go hungry in a big way. I’ll be happy to cite some reliable statistics here, if anyone cares to see them. And if it wouln’t be improper to take up space that might better be left open for other people’s thoughts.
Space is unlimited.
Peoples’ attention spans are not.
My forbearers were German farmer stock.
For all of our history, immigrants came to America for opportunity and to be “an American,” that is, up until the DNC rebranded itself effectively as the “Sedition Party, the “Anatcho-Socialism Party,” and are fighting to turn off the flame on our melting pot making it cool so those peaky truths we hold to be self-evident and endowed by our Creator may instead become the patronage of the Democratic Party, or any Party that lives off of the dependency of the People, their Subjects.
The Socialism and sedition hiding behind the inane term of “tossed salad” (non) assimilation deprives immigrants of the quintessential blessing of being an American.
Hi Senator Brownsberger:
Thank you for putting the report together. Years ago, I left the for-profit sector for the nonprofit world and worked in housing for about 7 years for both The Pine Street Inn out of Boston and Caritas Communities based in Braintree. Ultimately, because of my frustration with what I felt was overregulation, I went back to for-profit work and currently give as much of my extra time and money as possible to a couple of nonprofits. I’m happy to share my experience with you next time I visit your office. Eric Helmuth has been kind enough to be helping me with one of those nonprofits, so I’ll probably be there soon. Just let me know.
Sincerely,
Sean Flinn
Great work. As a long time VLI person I have been very challenged to afford housing and has always had to share housing with other people. My daughter and all my friends are in the same boat. Bringing recognition to the struggles of the working poor is the first step in addressing our needs.
It is Not a situation of immigration being the cause of our troubles.
There are no people we need to blame things on. There is only our own government that needs to understand the fiscal problem and create the solutions like universal healthcare to start. Properly taxing the supper wealthy for another.
100%. Spot-on. In this country today, the working poor are de facto second- or third-class citizens. Increasingly de jure, too. In practical real-world terms, just being VLI almost unavoidably implicates a person in some kind of crime. Someone recently expressed it this way: when checking out a certain gated community as a possible future home, they asked a resident of that very well-off enclave if they had any problem with crime. The reply, given with a sly wink, was: “No problem at all! We have no unorganized crime here.” That’s the present-day USA in a nutshell. If you’re wealthy and part of the club, you have no worries. You enjoy automatic immunity. If you’re working-poor, you can be fired or evicted or hauled off to jail for anything. Or even for nothing at all. Of the very few rich people behind bars today, most are there because they neglected to bribe the right official. Or the bribe was perceived as too stingy. It’s a national scandal and needs to be addressed.
Is there anyone willing to defend the literal order of magnitude jump in HomeBASE spending with a straight face?