A new analysis of the county’s housing stock and its affordability draws a bleak picture for even middle-income workers without serious efforts to address the problem, forecasting demand for more than 30,000 new lower-cost housing units by 2050. There are currently about 954 “affordable” housing units countywide, or about 3,500 fewer than what are needed given the area’s demographics, according to the projections, which were included in a new affordable housing plan.
The vacancy rate for multi-family housing units countywide was at less than 1 percent as of mid-2017, and has hovered at around that same mark for nearly two years, according to a market analysis done by commercial real estate service NAI Excel. In the rental market for single-family homes, the vacancy rate was just 2.6 percent as of mid-year, according to the analysis. The Spectrum
