the feminist librarian reads

The inability to find units they can afford forces many households to sacrifice on housing quality and/or location. Even with these tradeoffs, though, housing costs often exceed their ability to pay and thus result in limited spending on other necessities. Compared with households living in affordable housing, severely cost-burdened households in the bottom expenditure quartile (a proxy for low income) spend 39 percent less each month on food and 65 percent less on healthcare. These cutbacks seriously undermine the basic well-being of low-income households.