The housing affordability crisis is nearly inescapable in the US. Housing costs have skyrocketed in communities nationwide — from small towns to coastal supercities.
Rents across the country have risen by 26% since early 2020, according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies on the state of US housing. While rent growth has slowed recently as a surge in new multifamily buildings came online, three in five housing markets are still seeing growing rent prices.
Half of all tenant households were cost-burdened as of 2022, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on rent, the Harvard report found. That was the highest share since the US Census first started collecting this data, the report noted. The number who are severely cost-burdened — meaning they spend more than 50% of their income on rent — also hit a record high in 2022.
“Rents have been rising faster than incomes for decades,” Alexander Hermann, a senior research associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing, said in a statement. “However, the pandemic-era rent surge produced an unprecedented affordability crisis that continues.”
Lower-income and people of color are among the most vulnerable renters, according to the study. And certain communities across the country — from Naples, Florida, to Corvallis, Oregon — are facing some of the highest rates of cost-burdened tenants.
In Florida, there are five metro areas where more than 60% of renters are cost-burdened. Naples-Marco Island and Port St. Lucie, Florida, lead the nation in cost-burdened renters, with about 64% of tenants in both places spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
Two Pennsylvania metro areas were in the top 10 for the highest percentage of cost-burdened renters: State College and East Stroudsburg, at 63% and 61%, respectively.
Some metro areas in the US have housing markets where more than 40% of tenants are severely cost-burdened and spending over half their income on housing. According to the Harvard report, 45% of renters in Stillwater, Oklahoma, are severely cost-burdened, the highest percentage in the nation.
Corvallis, Oregon; Port St. Lucie, Florida; and State College, Pennsylvania, are the three metro areas that are in the top 10 for both cost-burdened and severely cost-burdened renters.
Renters are also increasingly locked out of buying a home. Home prices and mortgage interest rates have surged in recent years, putting homeownership out of reach for even more renters. The US home price index is 47% higher than it was in early 2020, and the median home price is about five times the median household income, Harvard’s report noted.
And many homeowners are also struggling with the rising cost of insurance premiums, home repairs, and property taxes. The number of cost-burdened homeowners — those who spent more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities — rose by about three million people between 2019 and 2022, the report found.
Are you struggling with the cost of rent? We want to hear from you. Please contact these reporters at jtowfighi@businessinsider.com and erelman@businessinsider.com
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