The shortage of affordable housing for extremely low-income households is a primary focus for Texas Housers. This is an issue that affects millions of Texans, and the latest data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s The Gap Report for 2025 shows that federal funding and protections are desperately needed to fix this problem severely affecting Texas.
Nationally, there are only 35 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. In Texas, that number falls to 25 such homes available to extremely low income households, or 1 available home for every 4 households in need, putting our state in the bottom five states in the country for available and affordable housing. In fact, 3 of the 5 poorest performing metropolitan areas for affordable housing units available to ELI households are Austin (16), Houston (16) and Dallas (14). We simply do not have enough housing available for these hard-working families.
The data shows that in Texas, more than 90% of extremely low-income renters are in the labor force, are seniors, have a disability, are in school, or are single adult caregivers. And yet, they cannot find housing that is affordable for them, and are forced to pay for rent that leaves them with only a few dollars for other basic necessities such as food, healthcare, transportation, or childcare.
More than 85% of extremely low-income renters in Dallas, Austin, and Houston experience severe housing cost burdens, meaning that the household pays more than 50% of their income to rent. And the issues that could offset these gaps in housing are not currently avaialble in Texas. For example, in Boston, HUD-assisted housing accounts for 17% of the rental stock and 63% of the lowest-income renters are severely cost-burdened. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Houston, where just 4% of the rental stock is HUD-assisted and 85% of extremely low-income renters are severely cost-burdened. The relationship between severe cost burden prevalence and HUD-assisted housing is specific to the lowest-income renters.
And these issues also are highlighted among racial lines. The report shows that Black households are three times more likely than white households to be extremely low-income renters and Black renter households are the most likely to experience severe cost burden at 32%, followed by Latino renter households at 29%, while white renters are the least likely at 24%. The causes for these issues stem from historic and ongoing discrimination and remedying our national housing crisis requires that we assess and triage these issues and who they are acutely affecting.
Texas accounts for 10 percent of the entire renting population of the United States and 8 percent of all extremely low-income renter households. We have the kind of representation in our state where our voices should be heard. What we see is that the private market fails to provide an adequate supply of affordable housing for the lowest-income renters. We need federal subsidies and protections to address the housing shortage for extremely low-income renter households.
A number of these solutions we must utilize include increasing federal funding for programs that both preserve and expand the supply of deeply affordable units for the lowest income renters by increasing funding for programs like public housing and the national Housing Trust Fund, increasing funding for Housing Choice Vouchers and ensure they are able to be used by making source of income discrimination illegal, and creating an emergency stabilization fund to ensure that renters in distress can remain in their homes, just to name a few ways.
You can read The Gap 2025 and view more interactive data at nlihc.org/gap
