Yes. 72% of rental households in Tucson pay more than 30% of their household income toward housing costs. From 2012 to 2017, less than 10% of residential housing units built or rehabilitated in Tucson were dedicated or subsidized as affordable housing. According to a recent study by the University of Arizona, there are almost 92,000 market and/or income-restricted units of affordable housing needed to accommodate the lower-income households who need affordable housing in Tucson. Furthermore, as of February 2018 there were over 18,000 families on the waiting list for a Section 8 (government subsidized) housing voucher and no new applications were being accepted. Tucson’s section 8 program has just 5,654 vouchers, an allocation based on a HUD needs assessment completed in the 1990s. According to the 2018 NLIHC report, the amount of full-time jobs at minimum wage needed to afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment in Tucson is 1.6. Additionally, among poor renter households in Tucson earning between 50 and 100 percent of the federal poverty level, 92.5 percent spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, according to a 2018 survey by UA student researchers.
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