Immigrant Families More Likely to Be Burdened by High Housing Costs - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Immigrant Families More Likely to Be Burdened by High Housing Costs

Posted March 17, 2016
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Blog immigrantfamilieshighhousingcosts 2016

In 2014, near­ly half of all kids in immi­grant fam­i­lies lived in house­holds that spent more than 30% of their income on housing.

In com­par­i­son, just 32% of kids in U.S.-born fam­i­lies lived in house­holds with a sim­i­lar­ly high hous­ing burden.

Here’s why this dis­par­i­ty mat­ters: Immi­grant fam­i­lies are more like­ly to earn low­er wages com­pared to their U.S.-born col­leagues. Pay­ing more for hous­ing — while bring­ing home small­er pay­checks — puts immi­grant fam­i­lies at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage. They face a tougher road to finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and often strug­gle to cov­er basic expenses.

It’s not sur­pris­ing, then, that immi­grant fam­i­lies are three times more like­ly to live in crowd­ed hous­ing and also less like­ly than to achieve home­own­er­ship than their Amer­i­can-born coun­ter­parts. In 2014, 51% of kids in immi­grant fam­i­lies lived in homes that were owned while 61% of their native-born peers shared this hous­ing status.

Vis­it the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter for more hous­ing data at the state and nation­al level.

This post is related to: