The chart below was generated by the Census Bureau's very nice American Fact Finder tool, using 2015 data, and helps to explain the Coalition of Religious Communities Poverty Fact of the Month for August, 2017. These key facts are:
1. 276,706 housing units in Utah are occupied by renters.
2. 22.3 percent of these rental units are lived in by households than $20,000 per year.
3. 20.1 percent of those rental units are occupied by households earning less than $20,000 per year who are paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent.
20.1 percent of 276,000 households is 55,618 households. That is a lot of people struggling to pay a rent that housing experts agree they cannot afford. Given how much rents have increased during the past two years this problem is probably worse now than it was when this data was collected.
1. 276,706 housing units in Utah are occupied by renters.
2. 22.3 percent of these rental units are lived in by households than $20,000 per year.
3. 20.1 percent of those rental units are occupied by households earning less than $20,000 per year who are paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent.
20.1 percent of 276,000 households is 55,618 households. That is a lot of people struggling to pay a rent that housing experts agree they cannot afford. Given how much rents have increased during the past two years this problem is probably worse now than it was when this data was collected.