Income, Housing & Families (Repost from July/August 2025)

Labor Day is around the corner, and we thought it would be enlightening to spend this month sharing insight into the relationship between income earning and housing, especially for low-income families. 

The contrast between stagnant incomes and soaring housing prices remains painfully acute—especially for families. According to the NC Housing Coalition, 47% of rental households in Durham County spend over 30% of their income on housing. A family would need to make a minimum of $74,880 a year to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the fair market rental rate in Durham. This financial burden for housing especially puts single-parent, women-led families at extreme risk of eviction and homelessness. Housing costs extract so much from family budgets that little remains to cover childcare, healthcare, or build savings, eroding stability and pushing parents and children toward precarious housing situations.

Structural inequalities further deepen the crisis. Research from the National Partnership for Women and Families found that in 2023, across all workers in the U.S., women earned just 75 cents for every dollar earned by men, with even wider disparities for Black women (64¢), Latinas (51¢), and Native women (52¢). If this gap was eliminated, it could pay for nearly 7 months of housing for a family.  Even as the overall U.S. gender pay gap narrowed modestly in 2024, the “motherhood penalty” continued to compound the burden: women’s earnings drop approximately 15% due to unpaid caregiving alone, costing about $295,000 over a lifetime. For mothers who are primary or sole earners—a role held by 40% of households with children under 18—these income setbacks translate directly into higher instability and risk of homelessness.

In addition, families need reliable childcare to remain employed. And childcare continues to be prohibitively expensive. With inadequate public support, this cost disproportionately affects working parents—especially women in low-wage or informal jobs—forcing tough compromises that can destabilize housing. Unpredictable schedules or multiple part-time jobs—common among the working poor—only magnify the difficulty in securing reliable, affordable care.