Shortage of Affordable Housing
According to the June, 2024 "Maryland Housing Profile" compiled by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), Maryland has "a shortage of rental homes affordable and available to extremely low income households (ELI), whose incomes are at or below the poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income (AMI). Many of these households are severely cost burdened, spending more than half of their income on housing. Severely cost burdened poor households are more likely than other renters to sacrifice other necessities like healthy food and healthcare to pay the rent, and to experience unstable housing situations like evictions." The statistics are stark:
197,310 or 26% - .Renter households that are extremely low income.
-134,192 - Shortage of rental homes affordable and available for extremely low income renters.
$37,740 - Average income limit for 4-person extremely low income household.
$76,345 - Annual household income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home at HUD's Fair Market Rent.
73% - Percent of extremely low income renter households with severe cost burden.
According to the NLIHC's Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing (2024), working at minimum wage of $15.00/hour each week you have to work 82 hours to afford a modest 1 bedroom rental home at the State's Fair Market Rent. In Maryland, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,909. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities - without paying more than 30% of income on housing - a household must earn $6,362 monthly or $76,345 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of $36.70.
Read the Maryland profile in the NLIHC's Out of Reach report.
Housing Inventory Characteristics
In 2019-2023, Maryland had a total of 2.5 million housing units. Of these housing units:
72.4% were single-family houses either not attached to any other structure or attached to one or more structures (commonly referred to as "townhouses" or "row houses").
26.2% of the housing units were located in multi-unit structures, or those buildings that contained two or more apartments.
1.3% were mobile homes, while any remaining housing units were classified as "other," which included boats, recreational vehicles, vans, etc.
When was the Housing Built?
8.6% of the housing inventory was comprised of houses built since 2010, while 10.8% of the houses were first built in 1939 or earlier. The median number of rooms in all housing units in Maryland was 6.2 rooms, and of these housing units 66.4 percent had three or more bedrooms (Source: DP04 | Selected Housing Characteristics).
Occupied Housing Characteristics
In 2019-2023, Maryland had 2.3 million housing units that were occupied or had people living in them, while the remaining 206,022 were vacant.
Of the occupied housing units, the percentage of these houses occupied by owners (also known as the homeownership rate) was 67.5% while renters occupied 32.5%. The average household size of owner-occupied houses was 2.70 and in renter-occupied houses it was 2.34.
Some 9.3% of householders of these occupied houses had moved into their house since 2021, while 10.9% moved into their house in 1989 or earlier. Households without a vehicle available for personal use comprised 8.7% and another 22.1% had three or more vehicles available for use (Source: DP04 | Selected Housing Characteristics).
Financial Characteristics and Housing Costs
In 2019-2023, the median property value for owner-occupied houses in Maryland was $397,700.
Of the owner-occupied households, 71.5% had a mortgage. 28.5% owned their houses "free and clear," that is without a primary mortgage or loan on the house. The median monthly housing costs for owners with a mortgage was $2,301 and for owners without a mortgage it was $728.
For renter-occupied households, the median gross rent for Maryland was $1,662. Gross rent includes the monthly contract rent and any monthly payments made for electricity, gas, water and sewer, and any other fuels to heat the house (Source: DP04 | Selected Housing Characteristics).
Disability
In Maryland, among the civilian noninstitutionalized population in 2019-2023, 11.4% reported a disability. The likelihood of having a disability varied by age - from 4.3% of people under 18 years old, to 9.2% of people 18 to 64 years old, and to 29.6% of those 65 and over (Source: DP02 | Selected Social Characteristics in the United States).
Go to the Census Bureau's 1999-2023 Maryland Narrative Profile.
