Home Ownership rises in state
Kurt Metzger, research director of the Center for Urban Studies, comments about housing costs taking a bigger chunk out of the average paycheck. "A lot of the low-income people who got jobs in the late '90's through welfare-to-work or whatever have been downsized or cut back or lost their jobs," Metzger says. "Even if their rents haven't gone up much, their incomes have gone down."