Deriving Place-Specific Measures of the Rental Housing Crisis from the 1980 Census: An Application from Texas

The argument is advanced that rental affordability problems are the key symptom of the rental housing crisis. These problems may be measured by the rent-to-income ratio as reported by the 1980 census for five different income groups. Of special significance is that these data are available in a standardized form for every county, city and census tract in the nation. To demonstrate the use of these data, a rent burden indicator is constructed from these data and then applied to all counties in Texas with at least 100,000 population. One county, Travis, stands out with a particularly high incidence of rent burden, and this incidence is only slightly reduced when the rent burden indicator is adjusted to a standardized income distribution. This provides clear evidence of an unusually severe rental housing crisis.