2012-02-28 "Many in Solano spending half their incomes on housing" by Richard Bammer from "The Vacaville Reporter"
Reflecting the state average in a nationwide study, an estimated one-third of Solano County's working households spend more than half of their incomes on housing.
That is the finding of a Washington, D.C.-based research firm with links to a nonprofit housing advocacy group, the National Housing Conference, which promotes the availability of safe, decent and affordable housing for Americans.
Housing Landscape 2012, the new study by the Center for Housing Policy, confirms that falling U.S. home prices have not solved the housing affordability problems of the nation's working households. Also, the share of working households with a "severe housing cost burden increased significantly" for owners and renters between 2008 and 2010, during the depths of the Great Recession, rose from 22 percent to 24 percent, Cynthia Adcock, a spokeswoman for the center, said in a press release.
But California, like many other states ravaged by the U.S. home foreclosure crisis that began with the fall of Countrywide Home Loans in late summer 2007, had the greatest share of working households with the steepest housing costs in 2010, with 34 percent, the report indicated.
Among other key national findings were these: Shrinking incomes, brought on layoffs and stagnant wages, outpaced falling homeownership costs; and renters faced rising costs as their household budgets got tighter.
Among state and local findings: Since 2008, affordability has steadily eroded for working households in 24 states. And 19 of the 50 largest metro areas saw the number of working households with severe housing cost burdens increase between 2008 and 2010.
The center defined "working households" as those with an income of no more than 120 percent of the area median income in which the household members worked an average of at least 20 hours per week for the preceding 12 months. It defined "severe housing cost burden" as monthly housing costs (including utilities) exceeding 50 percent of household income.
The median household income in Solano County was $65,000 in 2009, according to the latest information on the county's official web site. At the time of the 2010 U.S. Census, the county's population was 413,000, and there were an estimated 130,000 households.
The median home price in Solano County in December 2011 was $182,000 but it was $198,000 in 2010, a drop of nearly 8 percent, according to DataQuick, a real estate tracking firm based in Southern California.
The median home sale price in Vacaville (year over year in December 2011 and 2010, respectively) was $210,00 and $222,500, a drop of 6 percent; in Dixon, it was $210,000 and $196,000, a rise of slightly more than 7 percent; in Fairfield, it was $199,000 and $243,000, a drop of 18 percent; in Rio Vista, it was $243,000 and $152,000, a rise of nearly 60 percent; in Vallejo, it was $136,250 and $147,000, a drop of 7.3 percent.