Ensuring Housing Opportunities in Fairfax
Download: fairfaxpennyfundreport_final.pdf (259KB)
Report Findings
The report finds while many households face challenges in the affluent county’s housing market, lower income households are largely shut out of finding affordable housing opportunities close to the communities they serve.
Over 90 percent of owners and over 80 percent of renters earning less than $20,000 a year live in unaffordable housing in Fairfax County. While this proportion is similar to other areas of the country, what makes an expensive community such as Fairfax stand out is that the incidence of unaffordable housing falls little when the income is raised to $50,000: 64 percent of owner households and 78 percent of renter households earning between $35,000 and $50,000 in Fairfax lived in unaffordable housing in 2005. Conversely, only 16 percent of families earning $75,000 or more live in unaffordable housing. At $75,000 a family can spend $22,500 a year on housing costs and still have $52,000 a year for other expenditures.
