It’s no longer news that when it comes to its residents’ health, Wyandotte County ranks near the bottom of Kansas counties and Johnson County ranks at the top.
Nor is it news that the health disparities between the two adjoining counties have less to do with individual behaviors than with socioeconomic factors like income levels, jobs, education and long-standing practices such as redlining and predatory lending that discriminate against people of color.
What may come as a bit of a surprise is that housing costs – and the financial burden they impose – factor pretty heavily into the mix as well.
It turns out that nearly one in six Wyandotte County households spend more than half their income on housing, compared with just one in 11 Johnson County households. In Kansas as a whole, about one in 10 households spend more than half their income on housing costs.
