Our latest America’s Rental Housing report points to an escalating affordability crisis. In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid increase in rents combined with widespread financial hardship have pushed the number of cost-burdened renters to a record high of 22.4 million households in 2022. As housing costs have outpaced income gains by a widening margin, lower-income renters have less left over after paying for housing than ever before. In 2022, the median residual income remaining after rent payment fell to a record low of just $310 each month for lower-income renters, far below the minimum needed to afford an adequate standard of living.
In recent decades, rents have dramatically outpaced renter household incomes (Figure 1). Between 2001 and 2022, the median rent increased by 21 percent, while the median renter household income increased by just 2 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Rents have grown rapidly across all income groups. Since 2001, the median rent for households earning $75,000 or more increased by 27 percent, to $1,800 in 2022. This was the largest increase of any income group. Still, the median rent for middle-income households earning between $30,000 and $74,999 increased by a sizeable 18 percent (to $1,300), while the median rent for households earning less than $30,000 grew by 14 percent (to $940). Although lower-income households experienced the smallest increase in median rents, this is a group for whom housing is persistently unaffordable; in 2022, 83 percent of renter households earning less than $30,000 were cost burdened.
Approved – Sully
RandyMarsh
Article URL : https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/high-housing-costs-are-consuming-household-incomes