Homeowners
Benefits

• Are 25% more likely to graduate from high school
• Are 116% more likely to graduate from college
• Are 20% less likely to become teenage mothers
• Have 9% higher math scores
• Have 7% higher reading scores
• Have 3% fewer behavior problems
• Are 59% more likely to own a home within 10 years of moving from parent’s household
• Save taxpayers an estimated $34,000 in public expenditures (i.e. the cost of juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, etc.) that would have been spent had they remained in rented housing.

• Are 28% more likely to repair or improve their homes
• Are 12% more likely to maintain a garden outside their homes
• Are 10% more likely to report they have worked to solve local problems
• Live 4 times longer in a community
• Are 11% more likely to know who represents them in Congress
• Are 9% more likely to know who their school-board representative is
• Are 15% more likely to vote

• Are 10% more likely to attend church
• Are 16% more likely to belong to parent-teacher organizations, block clubs, etc.
• Read newspapers 1.3 times more often
• Are less likely to have alcohol and substance-abuse problems

A family with one fulltime worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford (at 30 percent of income) the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country. Indeed, 24 states, even households with two full-time minimum wage earners lack the income to cover fair-market rents on such a unit without exceeding the 30-percent-of-income threshold for affordability. The State of the Nation’s Housing Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University 2001

• 25,308 (51%) of poverty level households in San Antonio pay more than half of their income for rent. Source: San Antonio Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy, 1994-1999.
• A full time San Antonio wage earner would have to earn $10.48 per hour to afford a typical two bedroom apartment. Source: Out of Reach, National Low Income Housing Coalition, April, 1998
• 41% of San Antonio renter households are unable to afford the rent for a typical two bedroom apartment. Source: IBID

• More than 12,000 poor San Antonio renter households live in physically deficient housing, the highest ratio (29%) for any major US city. Source: US Bureau of the Census, American Housing Survey, 1995.
• 6,000 poor renter households in San Antonio live in overcrowded housing or are doubled up with other families in the same house. Source: IBID