Nearly half of the people who are renters in the U.S. are struggling to afford their monthly payments, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and highlighted in this CNN Money article from Kathryn Vasel.
Experts generally recommend keeping your housing costs around 30% of your monthly income. But the number of “cost-burdened” tenants – those who spend more than 30% of their income on rent – rose to 21.3 million people last year, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Of those, more than 26% are “severely cost burdened” and spend more than half of their income to cover rent.
Here’s the problem: rents are increasing much faster than wages. Inflation-adjusted rents increased 7% from 2001-2014 while household incomes dropped 9%, the report showed. At the same time, rising demand for rental units has pushed the national vacancy rate to a 30-year low, driving prices even higher.
“These trends have led to record numbers of renters paying excessive amounts of income for housing, with little prospect for meaningful improvement,” the report said. The median rent for a new apartment climbed to $1,372 last year, a 26% increase from 2012.
While low-income households are the most likely to have a hard time making ends meet, middle-income households are increasingly struggling to make rent.
