As climate change intensifies, severe flood events have become more commonplace across the entire U.S. Extreme flooding disproportionately impacts low-income communities and people of color because they often live in areas that are more prone to flooding, in housing stock not well suited to weather such events, and lack adequate disaster plans as well as the financial means to evacuate and/or temporarily relocate.

In this new series, experts from Enterprise combine research, data and stories that demonstrate the impact of specific policy areas on racial disparities in both housing and non-housing outcomes.

The share of renters wrestling with unaffordable housing continues to rise, with just under half of all renter households now spending more than 30 percent of their monthly gross income on housing costs, recent data show. While the scale of the affordability crisis for renters is well known, less understood is how this burden has shifted over time both by race and geography. Since 2019, households of color – long disproportionately impacted by affordability challenges – experienced greater increases in spending large shares of their income on housing relative to non-Hispanic white renters. We examine these trends – observed using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) – to explain what they mean for renters who struggle to make ends meet.

Congress has released its first tranche of spending bills for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24), which includes funding for major housing, community development, and homelessness programs. The omnibus package of six bills (also known as a minibus) includes Congress’s proposal for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) and the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies (Agriculture-FDA).