Overcrowded housing is an important factor in measuring quality of life in a community. Overcrowded living conditions can affect child development, impact mental health through a lack of privacy, and enhance the spread of communicable diseases. It is also an indicator of the housing affordability and economic health of a community.
There are several ways to measure overcrowding, including the number of persons per bedroom or per square footage of the unit. The most commonly used measure is persons per room. In this report, a household is considered to be overcrowded if there is more than one person per room living in the housing unit. The U.S. Census definition of a room for the purpose of determining occupancy is as follows: Rooms must be separated by built-in archways or walls that extend out at least 6 inches and go from floor to ceiling. Bathrooms, porches, balconies, foyers, halls, or unfinished basements are not considered rooms. Numerous federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, use this definition and census data to formulate policy and allocate funding.
Only two cities (Apex and Matthews) were in the group with the 10 lowest overcrowding rates for each period in our report. There were no cities in the group with the 10 highest overcrowding rates for each period. Most cities had larger overcrowding rates than the state as a whole in 1990 and 2000. However, after 2000, most cities' overcrowding rates were lower than the statewide average. The 2010-2012 data show an increase in the number of cities with rates above the statewide average.
Over time, the state's overcrowding rates have been lower than the national rate. The percentage of people living in overcrowded housing in North Carolina grew from 2.7 percent to 3.4 percent between 1990 and 2000, a 25.7 percent increase. Over this same period the national rate increased by 22.5 percent, from 4.7 percent to 5.7 percent. For the 2010-2012 timeframe, 2.4 percent of North Carolinians lived in overcrowded housing. The data indicates that overcrowding is not a significant problem for the vast majority of North Carolinians. Because these figures are so small, change of less than one percentage point (as was the case between 1990 and 2000) can reflect a substantial change in percentage (in this case, an increase of over 25 percent).
Although the Census highly discourages comparing data from the decennial census and the American Community Survey, the significant drop in overcrowding rates starting with the 2005-2007 data merits some comment. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers this significant drop in overcrowding to be related more to changes in data collection rather than a change in actual conditions. In addition, for the 1990 and 2000 timeframes, significant fluctuations in rates for individual cities are not uncommon. In the March 2012 issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Paul Joice writes that the fluctuations are likely due in part to lack of understanding of what constitutes a "room" for the purposes of responding to this Census question. The Census Bureau has reworded this question in order to address concerns about the underreporting of the number of rooms. In addition, Joice notes that with the American Community Survey moving to a more telephone and in-person interview based process for collecting data (rather than relying heavily on mailed in responses), respondents are likely to have fewer misunderstandings.