Twin Cities area residents face extremely high housing costs compared to incomes for both owners and renters. The problem has worsened markedly in recent years. By 2010, 14.6% of all area households, or one in seven, paid more than half of their income for housing. At this level of housing cost burden, families face difficult choices between paying for housing and other necessities such as transportation, food, and prescription medicines.

About 93,000 owner households and 90,000 renter households now pay more than half of their income for housing in the Metro area. The burden falls especially heavily on lower-income area residents. Two-thirds of households earning less than $50,000 per year pay more than they can comfortably afford for housing, according to HUD guidelines, compared to about 1 in 6 households with incomes above $50,000.

Median Household Income, 2010: $62,352

Median Renter Household Income, 2010: $31,371 

Homelessness has grown dramatically in the Twin Cities area. By 2009, over 6,400 people and were counted as homeless on a given night, compared to 5,400 in 2006 and many fewer in the 1990s.

 
In the Twin Cities metro area, the foreclosure crisis has resulted in 97,000 foreclosures in the 11-county metro (84,500 in the 7-county metro) from 2005 through 2011, leaving in its wake severe distress for families. Neighborhoods have been devastated in hard-hit areas.

Technical information on these charts can be found here.