The ability of Duluth area residents to afford housing is a growing concern. By 2009, nearly 14% of all area households were paying more than half of their income for housing. At this level of housing cost burden, families often must make difficult choices between paying for housing and other necessities such as transportation, food, and prescription medicines.

For renters, the burden of paying for housing weighs especially heavily.  Nearly 10,000 renter households now pay more than half of their income for housing.  This is an increase of nearly 40% since 2005. The burden falls especially heavily on lower-income Duluth area residents. Almost 2 in 3 renters in households earning less than $50,000 per year pay more than they can comfortably afford for rent, according to HUD guidelines, compared to 1 in 24 renter households with higher incomes.

Median Household Income, 2009: $44,597

Median Renter Household Income, 2009: $21,812 

Unfortunately, the Duluth area, like the state of Minnesota as a whole, has seen a marked increase in both the number of homeless people and the number of foreclosures since the middle of the decade.

Technical information on these charts can be found here.