Freeman L. America 's affordable housing crisis: a contract unfulfilled. American Journal of Public Health. 2002;92: 709-712.
This paper puts forth a public health argument for making access to healthy housing a federal entitlement, similar to food stamps or Medicaid. The author notes that current policies are not adequate to provide housing assistance to everyone who has housing need. He argues that affordability is the key housing issue to address from a policy perspective, since it is the single largest expenditure for most households and has the potential to affect all other domains of life. Housing is considered to be affordable if a household pays up to 30 percent of its income to housing. Statistics indicate that more people do not have affordable housing in 1999 than did in 1989. For example, in 1989 17 percent of renters paid more than 50 percent of their income for rent; in 1999, 20 percent of renters paid more than 50 percent of their income for rent. The author argues that housing policy must be set at the federal level, which is most efficient and avoids local governments competing with their neighbors to provide the most minimal benefits to avoid attracting larger numbers of poor people.
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