HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research recently released national estimates of the number and characteristics of worst case needs (WCN) households that include people with disabilities in Worst Case Housing Needs of People with Disabilities “” Supplemental Findings of the Worst Case Housing Needs 2009: Report to Congress. These unassisted renter households have incomes below 50 percent of the area median income (very low incomes) and live in severely inadequate housing, pay more than half their income for rent, or both. The recent estimates, compiled from new questions on disability in the 2009 American Housing Survey, show there were approximately 1 million worst case households with nonelderly disabled members in that year. The income proxy measure of households with disabilities used in past analyses (to allow for comparison) estimated that WCN households with disabilities increased by 140,000 between 2007 and 2009, affecting 1.1 million households.

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