Households may be doubling up as poverty spikes

Posted on 18. Sep, 2010 by Alana Casanova in Uncategorized

While the state’s poverty rate spiked in 2009, the increase may have been mitigated by households doubling up and young adults holding off on moving out on their own, housing experts say.

The phenomena may also lead to a greater disparity between households and housing units reported in the census figures for 2010.

Census reports found that New York’s poverty rate jumped from 14.2 percent in 2008 to 15.8 percent last year, leaving over 3 million New Yorkers living below the poverty rate. Specific data for New York City was not released.

Doubling up is certainly not new in New York City, where a lack of single person occupancy units plagues the real estate market, said Sarah Watson, senior policy analyst at the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Council.

“It’s not necessarily about the poverty rate increase,” Watson said. “In New York, there’s a mismatch between the housing stock and what people need.”

A third of households in New York City had a single person in 2008, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and roughly a quarter had more than one head of household, suggesting that there was an unconventional living arrangement. Only 17 percent were made up of a nuclear family with two parents and children under the age of 25.

But real estate in the five boroughs is still geared toward traditional families, Watson noted. Under New York City zoning resolutions, it is illegal for more than three unrelated people to live together.

The result is a patchwork of uncomfortable and often unsafe housing conditions where quarters are sometimes converted illegally. Vacancy rates in the city are not growing because of an influx of young professionals during the last few years, and roughly a million more people are expected to live in New York City by 2030.

“The idea of a housing unit for a household unit is just not realistic,” Watson said. “That is absolutely what makes the housing market dysfunctional and brings up the prices of rent.”

But there simply isn’t enough data that has been released to definitively support the idea that household numbers are dropping or slowing down, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist and professor at Queens College at the City University of New York.

There is evidence that children are moving back home or simply not moving out, he said, but numbers on doubled-up households has yet to be released.

“It’s probably true,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was doubling up, or if people weren’t moving out, but unfortunately, there’s no hard numbers.”