Calculations from the National Low Income Housing Coalition have made their way into a number of recent news reports and opinion pieces. The Echo Press of Alexandria, MN reports on the new county profiles from the Minnesota Housing Partnership. These profiles include data developed by NLIHC and show that “In every county in Minnesota, some families face paying more than half of their income for their housing.”

Florida Legal Services staff attorney and retired NLIHC board member Charles Elsesser notes, in a letter to the Miami Herald, that with that city’s Housing Wage at almost $22 an hour, the need for affordable rental housing is clear and it’s time to talk seriously about solutions.

An opinion piece in the New Jersey Jewish News uses figures from Out of Reach to show how difficult it is for seniors living on fixed incomes in New Jersey to afford market-rate rental housing. The author notes that mission-driven nonprofits devoted to developing housing for seniors can’t do their work if the federal government does not provide adequate funding for housing for extremely low income people.

We return to Minnesota for a look at a report NLIHC released this spring, Affordable Housing Dilemma: The Preservation vs. Mobility Debate. This brief article in The Twin Cities Daily Planet notes that neither investing in community redevelopment, nor making it possible for low income people to move to higher opportunity neighborhoods, will be the solution to America’s affordable housing challenges in all cases.

Affordable Housing Dilemma made its way into a report in the Nashua Telegraph on the the Nashua Housing Authority’s plan to demolish a public housing development many say is worth saving because it is well-maintained and affordable. The housing authority counters that demolishing the dense development would allow the residents to move to less-crowded areas where they would no longer be “defined and isolated by their income level.” The article suggests the debate in Nashua is a perfect example of the discussion in NLIHC’s report, and notes that “spatial dispersion” is not a cure-all for poverty.

Have you seen any great uses of housing data in the news this week? Share them with us in the comments!