A novel study on housing insecurity in the District estimates that more than 82,000 residents – 12% of the city’s population – do not have stable housing. The overwhelming majority of those are Black and Hispanic households. 

Published Thursday by researchers from the Urban Institute, the report defines housing insecurity as living arrangements that are either unaffordable or inadequate, or so tenuous that occupants have to make frequent or unwanted moves. The researchers excluded unhoused people from their total. 

Black residents comprise 41% of the D.C. population but 68% of those facing housing insecurity, the authors found. Hispanic residents represent 7% of the city’s population but 14% of the housing insecure population. Conversely, while white residents comprise 40% of D.C.’s population, only 9% of people facing housing insecurity are white. 

One of the groups most affected by housing insecurity is children: An estimated one in five kids ages 17 and younger in D.C. face housing insecurity, the authors found. 

“We think that the report has some pretty dire findings, and that is even one of our most conservative [estimates] of housing insecurity,” Lydia Lo, one of the study’s lead authors, told DCist/WAMU. “One of the striking statistics that we didn’t enjoy finding but that was really illuminating is just, what resources and options you have to weather insecurity vary dramatically by race and by what kind of household you’re in.” 

Lo pointed to their research indicating that, of the white residents they found that face housing insecurity, half of those people are couch surfing or staying with friends to reduce living costs. But Black residents – who were also more likely to live in households with children – were more likely to experience other challenges, like overcrowding, housing with inadequate conditions issues like pests, and unaffordability.

“If you are Black in this city, and you’re housing insecure, you are dealing with inadequate housing, you are dealing with unaffordability, and that speaks to the different types of resources [available],” Lo adds.

Urban Institute conducted the study in conjunction with The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the nonprofit provider that coordinates D.C.’s homeless services system. The study is among the first to attempt to measure the scope of housing insecurity in D.C., in part because there is no widely accepted definition of the concept. 

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development narrowly defines homelessness, for example, as people who live on the street or stay in emergency shelters, excluding populations who participate in time-limited housing programs or stay with friends and relatives. Other federal agencies do recognize doubling up as a form of homelessness.  

Lo says that The Community Partnership approached Urban Institute as pandemic-era social service programs began to draw to a close, hoping to better understand how those changes would affect the people they serve. 

To capture the myriad forms that housing insecurity can take, the team created its own survey of more than a dozen metrics – ranging from poor housing quality to rent/mortgage payment uncertainty and a history of frequent moves – designed with feedback from focus groups conducted with people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity, as well as those who work in housing and real estate. 

Survey respondents who answered yes to five or more of the team’s metrics were categorized as housing insecure. Respondents were automatically considered housing insecure if they had received an eviction notice, faced foreclosure, or were living in their household temporarily. 

The team found that, among those facing housing insecurity, the most common type is housing unaffordability, followed by inadequate housing and unwanted moves. 

Claudia Solari, another of the report’s lead authors, encourages readers to pay close attention to the kinds of housing insecurity residents face – not just how many people face them.

For those who can’t afford their housing, policy interventions could include subsidies like mortgage or rental assistance. But those tools are less helpful for people who are moving for reasons unrelated to cost, she says; and in cases where renters are having problems with their landlord, it could be more beneficial to fund landlord mediations. “The way you plan your resources and who’s going to access them really will differ because of the different forms of instability people are experiencing,” Solari says.

The report comes amid a flurry of other studies indicating that more D.C. residents than ever face financial precarity: More than 44,000 D.C. residents spend more than half of their income on rent, one report published in October found, while more than one-third of residents face food insecurity. The U.S. Marshals service has reported, meanwhile, that eviction filings increased 250% between January 2022 and 2023. 

This story was updated to reflect a change in Urban Institute’s calculated rate of childhood housing insecurity.