Almost half of Pennsylvania's renters are over-burdened by their housing costs: 47% of Pennsylvanians that rent pay more than 30% of their income for housing, leaving few dollars left to cover other family needs. There is a shortage of 220,000 rental homes that are both available and affordable to extremely low income renters. 

As much as the private sector would like to address the shortage, they cannot do it alone. It simply costs more to build a modest home than a low wage worker or person on fixed income can afford.

Many good programs exist to fill the gap between what it costs to build or rehab a home and what low-income Pennsylvanians can afford to pay. Unfortunately, those programs have never had enough funding to solve the problem.