This report discusses the growing shortage of affordable housing in the rural United States. The data, released in February 1989, come from the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The data show that most of the 3.9 million poor households in nonmetropolitan areas pay high percentages of their limited incomes for housing. Large numbers of poor rural homeowners bear high housing costs, but bigger affordability problems are faced by poor rural renters. Moderate-income households also have significant housing-cost burdens in nonmetropolitan areas though such households spend proportionally less on housing costs than the poor. In fact, the data show that, as income rises, the proportion spent on housing declines. Since the 1970s, there has been a dramatic shift from a surplus to a shortage of rural low-income housing, burdening poor black and white families alike. While housing costs are a bigger burden in urban areas, incomes are lower in rural regions. Poor rural families also occupy a disproportionate share of substandard housing and for most such poor rural households, government subsidized housing is inaccessible. Most national analyses forecast that affordable housing will be less accessible to low-income families in the future. Nonmetro poor households are more likely to be white, elderly, and to include a married couple with at least one worker. Rural Southern households are more likely to be poor than those elsewhere in the nation. The U.S. housing problem is a crisis that requires action from both government and the private sector. (TES)