Housing Quality and Affordability Among Same- and Different-Sex Couple Households

Within American society, marginalization shapes access to many needed resources. As the U.S. housing crisis has shown, the need for affordable, stable, safe housing is paramount. Given the severity of the current housing crisis, we seek to understand housing insecurity, particularly among LGBTQ+ adults. In this brief report, we draw upon nationally representative data from the 2019–2022 American Community Survey to provide an up-to-date overview of inequities in housing quality and affordability among same- and different-sex couple households. We find that different-sex married households had the lowest proportions of incomplete plumbing and kitchen facilities. In addition, over a quarter of both different-sex and female same-sex cohabiting couple households spend more than 30% of their household income on housing needs, while the lowest proportion of housing cost burden was among male same-sex married couples. Our exploratory analysis suggests opportunities for future investigations of factors related to housing insecurity among sexual minority groups.