LA Ranks 2nd In US For Number Of Struggling Poor, Report Finds

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) – The number of poverty-stricken residents in the Los Angeles metropolitan area who either live in substandard conditions, or struggle to cover their rent, is the second-highest in the nation, a new report finds.

L.A. had 1.04 million very low-income renter households in 2015, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Of those, a staggering 55 percent, or 567,000 Angeleno households, lived under what HUD termed “worst-case housing needs.” Those were defined as households who spent more than half their income on rent, lived in severely inadequate conditions, or both.

L.A. was behind only New York City, which had 815,000 of its 1.84 million very low-income households designated in worst-case status, a rate of 44 percent.

Riverside also had a high share of struggling poor. Of its 215,000 very low-income households, 123,000 were in worst-case conditions, a rate of 57 percent.

This comes after a report last week by real estate firm Zillow which calculated that a 5 percent rent hike in the L.A. metro area would push nearly 2,000 more residents into homelessness.

The median rent in the L.A. metro area in June was $2,682, according to Zillow, a 4.2 percent increase from June of 2016.

The L.A. Homeless Services Authority’s annual count in January found 57,794 homeless in the county. That was a 23 percent jump from the year prior. Zillow estimates the L.A. metro population at about 13.3 million.

To read the HUD’s full report, click here.