Housing Affordabilty: Renters and Owners

This indicator shows the percent of households who are not housing cost-burdened, defined as households who spend less than 30% of their income on housing costs, including rent or mortgage, utilities, taxes, insurance, and fees. 

Between 2017 and 2021, about 2 in 3 King County households (65.1%), including renters, owners with mortgages, and owners without mortgages, paid less than 30% of their income for housing costs and were therefore considered to have affordable housing costs. Fewer renters (52.2%) compared to owners with mortgages (71.2%) had affordable housing costs. Households that pay a high percentage of their income for housing have less money for other necessities including food. 

• Trends: Overall, the rate of households in King County with affordable housing costs was higher in 2021 (64.6%) compared to 2012 (61.2%). Over this same time period, the proportion of mortgage holders who had affordable housing increased even more, from 63.1% to 71.4%. However, it did not grow for renters.   

• Race and ethnicity: Black/African American (44.8%) and Hispanic/Latino (58.5%) headed households were all less likely to have affordable housing costs than the King County average. 

• Gender: Male-headed households (70.3%) were more likely to have affordable housing costs than female-headed households (61.9%).  

• Age: Households headed by people 18-24 years old (36.3%) were less likely to have affordable housing costs compared to households headed by other age groups, including those 75+ years of age. However, those headed by people age 75 and older were also less likely to have affordable housing costs than King County average.  

• Income and poverty: Households with higher incomes were most likely to have affordable housing costs. Nearly all (96.6%) households with annual incomes of $150,000 or more had affordable housing costs, compared to only 12.8% of households earning less than $20,000 per year. Similarly, households experiencing poverty were least likely to have affordable housing costs. Less than 1 in 6 households earning less than 100% of the federal poverty level (14.6%) and about 1 in 5 households at 100-199% of poverty level (20.8%) had affordable housing costs. In comparison, most households with incomes 400%+ of the federal poverty level (87.0%) had affordable housing costs.  

• Region and city/neighborhood: Overall, households in South King County (62.5%) were less likely to have affordable housing than households in East King County (71.0%). Additionally, households in 14 cities/neighborhoods were less likely than King County average to have affordable housing costs, including Federal Way – Central (56.9%) and North Corridor (49.5%), Kent – Central (52.6%) and West (53.0%), North Highline/White Center (57.1%), Seattle – University District (37.2%), and Skyway (54.7%).