Maddie's Insights: Insights and Implications from Housing-Related Animal Shelter Intake Data (On-Demand)

Course overview

The lack of affordable and available rental housing in the US is an epidemic, impacting a majority of American renters -- not just low-income renters, although they're the most burdened. Housing insecurity for tenants has increased in severity in the last several years as rents have skyrocketed and eviction rates have, in many cities, climbed higher than even pre-pandemic levels (Harvard, 2024). Today, more renters than ever are experiencing at least moderate rent burden as unaffordability in the rental market hit an all-time high in 2022 (Harvard, 2024). The impact of the lack of available, affordable rental housing, and housing insecurity more broadly, is not felt race-neutrally. A 2024 report by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that over half of Black and Hispanic renter families were moderately or severely housing cost burdened, compared to only 41.9% of white renter families (Harvard, 2024). Housing insecurity directly impacts peoples' ability to acquire and keep pets for life. Already dismal options for affordable housing are likely to be worse for those families also searching for pet-inclusive housing, which I define as housing free from pet breed, size, or weight restrictions and nonrefundable pet fees or rents. In fact, a 2021 report from Michaelson Found Animals found that only approximately 8% of rental housing surveyed was free of breed, weight, or size restrictions. Distressingly, a 2003 FIREPAW study also found that only 7% of housing was pet-friendly, indicating that the rental housing market may not be significantly more "pet-friendly" than it was 20 years ago. There is a small, but growing body of research to better understand the impact of rental housing conditions on pets, pet owners, and animal shelters in the U.S. and how this issue relates to broader affordable housing and tenants' rights social justice advocacy. The purpose of this presentation is to share the results of three research projects, co-authored by the presenter, addressing the impact of restrictive pet policies in rental housing on pets, animal shelters, and the tenants who love them. Relying on more than 28,400 housing-related intake data points from animal shelters, interviews with tenants living in subsidized affordable housing, and surveys of existing pet policies in market-rate housing, authors of these studies also present programmatic and policy solutions to mitigate the flow of beloved animals into animal shelters and protect the human-animal bond -- particularly for tenants most at risk of experiencing housing insecurity.