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households with four or more members, 35% for one persoo. households, and 70% for two person households. If the $10,000 to $15,000 income group.were used as ~ point of reference 'instead, an optimum City level of homeownership would be about two-thirds, with homeownership rates of 75% among four o'r more person households, 30% among one person households, and 60% among two person households. 'ABILITY OF RENTERS TO AFFORD RE. NTA~ HOUSING In this section the ability of renters to afford rental housing will be discussed. As has been shown above, at any given time, most renters are unable to afford homeownership. They, consequently, must seek to find suitable housing which they can afford in the rental market. Many are not able to do so. The extent to which this is true represents an unmet need for adequate housing. Census data is available on the interrelationship be- . tween gross rent and income, including the percentage of income spent for gross rent. This data is analyzed in order to show the extent of "over-paying" for rental housing. Rents of occupied and vacant anits are also compared with" incomes of renters to show the deficit in low rent units. Since conditions appear to have increased since 1970, the statistics presented in-this section will tend to under- estimate the severity of the current situation in Santa Aha. The relationships between gross rent and the percentage of income spent for rent are shown in Table V-16. The percen- tage of households which pay a substantial percentage of their income for gross rent increases as gross'rent increases. This is true regardless of whether 20%, 25%, or' 35% is used as the cut-off point for "paying a substantial percentage of income for rent". These relationships are not strong ones, however, except at the very lowest rental prices. Since higher income households tended to rent more expensive units than lower income households, the above relationships might suggest that low income households paid a lower percentage of their income for rent th~n did higher income households. However, this was.not true at all. There is a very strong negative relationship between percentage of income spent for rent and income. This.relationship is shown in Table V-16. Among renters with incomes of under $2~000, 98.7% in Orange County and 97.9% in'Santa Aha paid 35% or more of their incomes for rent. The reason for a greater percentage of income spent for rent by households in Orange County than in Santa Aha is that the City had a relatively 000094