Half of American renters pay more than 30% of income on housing, study shows

Stephanie Sy:

And joining me now is Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, the lead author of a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies that has been tracking U.S. rental prices.

Whitney, thanks for joining the "NewsHour."

So those renters we just heard from, they're all described as cost burdened in housing market lingo. That means they're paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent. Your study found that, in 2022, 22.4 million Americans were in that boat.

Tell us more about what was behind that.

Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies: That's correct.

We saw a record high number of cost burdened renters in 2022. Part of this came from record high rent growth that came at the end of 2021 and early 2022. And that was really from a surge in rental demand in a period where we just weren't building enough. So, we weren't getting enough supply. We were seeing a huge increase in the number of renter households.

That drove vacancy rates really low, and it really pushed rents up, and it made it much harder for people to afford their housing.

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