More Americans Are Skipping Meals and Medical Treatments To Afford Housing Payments: Report

Dwindling Water Supply Forces Cities Like Phoenix To Make Hard Choices — (Photo : (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)) A worker helps construct a new home at a master-planned residential community near undeveloped Sonoran Desert on June 8, 2023 in Buckeye, Arizona. Buckeye is one of the fastest growing cities in the country and is located on the fringe of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs announced last week that that there is a shortage of groundwater for new housing construction which has been previously approved in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Arizona will no longer be able to give developers new permits for home construction in some outlying desert suburbs of Maricopa County which rely on groundwater wells. Some developers and affected cities will need to search for alternative sources of water for future development amid a warming climate.

A striking share of homeowners and renters across the United States are skipping essentials like meals and medical treatment to afford their monthly housing payments, according to a report.

At least 49.9% of homeowners and renters in the U.S. are struggling to afford their housing payments as incomes fail to keep up with the rising mortgage rates and home costs. As such, more Americans are now making sacrifices to keep a roof over their heads.

A survey commissioned by Redfin and conducted by Qualtrics found that 22% of homeowners and renters who struggle to afford housing indicated that they skipped meals in the past year to afford their monthly costs. Over one in seven (15.6%) said they delayed or skipped medical treatments to pay for housing.

Other sacrifices indicated in the survey include taking no or fewer vacations (34.5%), working additional hours or shifts (20.7%), selling belongings (20.6%), borrowing money from friends or family (17.9%), dipping into retirement savings (17.6%), working a side hustle (14.7%), and receiving a financial gift from friends or family (14.3%).

"Housing has become so financially burdensome in America that some families can no longer afford other essentials, including food and medical care, and have been forced to make major sacrifices, work overtime, and ask others for money so they can cover their monthly costs," Redfin's economics research lead, Chen Zhao, said.

Across Demographics

The survey noted that demographics played into the types of sacrifices homeowners and renters had to make to afford housing costs. For instance, Black respondents were most likely to work extra hours (25.9%) to cover their monthly costs. Hispanic respondents, on the other hand, were most likely to sell their belongings.

The study also found that 54.5% of white respondents said they could easily afford their housing payments. This goes down to 47.4% among Asian/Pacific Islander respondents, 46.6% of Black respondents, and 37.8% of Hispanic/LatinX respondents.

The survey had 2,995 respondents and was conducted in February 2024. Most of the data in the report focused on the 1,494 respondents who said they sometimes, regularly, or greatly struggle to afford monthly housing payments.