Statistics like these reflect the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. In the last 25 years, U.S. household incomes have dropped 30 percent - and for African Americans, more than 50 percent. Spiral of hardship. The brunt of the housing squeeze falls on those already at the greatest social disadvantage. Home ownership rates for families with parents younger than 30, just entering the job market and low-paid, have fallen 15 percent since 1980.
Seniors frequently lose their homes when pensions are too small to cover mortgage payments or taxes.
Massive numbers of the mentally ill were turned out into the streets by wholesale hospital closures in the 1980s. Farmworkers are routinely exempted from laws governing housing standards. The disabled still struggle to find accessible, affordable accommodation. For queer people, rarely covered by anti-discrimination statutes, housing difficulties are an everyday fact of life. And immigrants, who are excluded from normal forms of public aid, keenly feel the housing crunch as well.