This figure indicates how affordable housing is for renters. The federal Housing and Urban Development Department guideline for affordability is that rent should consume no more than 30% of household income. High housing costs can force households to choose between paying for housing and meeting other basic needs such as food, clothing and health care.

In 2017-21, racial and ethnic minorities in the region typically paid a larger proportion of their income on rent than white residents did. The proportion was 30% for African Americans, 34% for Hispanics and 26% for Asian Americans, compared to 28% for whites. While racial and ethnic disparities existed at the state and national levels as well, renters in all groups in the region paid a smaller proportion of their income on rent than in Massachusetts and had proportions similar to the U.S. as a whole, excepting Hispanics, who were paying more (34% in MetroWest, compared to 31%, nationally).

Compared to the region in 2017-21, Middlesex and Norfolk generally commanded equal or higher proportions of rent, while Worcester was lower.

Research connects lower incomes and higher poverty rates among people of color to historic and current policies and practices that disadvantaged people of color. These policies and systems, ranging from inequitable access to housing to employment discrimination to education systems that fail to equitably serve all populations, have prevented people of color from fully participating in our economy, locking them out of economic opportunity. This has resulted in lower incomes for people of color, which means housing costs are a greater burden. At the same time, housing costs are rising faster than incomes and affordable housing is limited.

Multiyear figures are from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The bureau combined five years of responses to the survey to provide estimates for smaller geographic areas and increase the precision of its estimates. The survey provides data on characteristics of the population that used to be collected only during the decennial census. Data for this indicator are released annually in January.