The Rental Housing Burden and the Increase in American Rental Rates

In spite of the nature of April 1, I thought I'd make a serious post about a topic dear to my heart: the rapid increase in rental rates and how this is putting a strain on those on the American household.

An article published by Buzzfeed News on March 28 did a fantastic job summarizing the issue (you can read it here: The Crushing Cost Of Rent Should Be 2020’s Big Issue) but I recently read a few sources for the article, which includes a publication from the Harvard University's 2018 State of the Nation's Housing and the NLIHC March 2019 report on the status of Affordable Housing.

Among the many major points raised by the source articles:

• - Individuals with "Extremely Low-Income" (incomes of 30% or less of the poverty line) currently face a housing shortage of 3.6 million units/homes, creating a cycle of either homelessness or severe cost burdens for wherever they are able to live
• - These individuals make up 11 million total American households, of which 7.8 million of them are spending more than half of their monthly income on their rent
  (For comparison sake, the average percentage of income spent on rent nationally in 2017 was 20.13% and 18.33% in the Rochester, NY area)
• - Home Ownership rates have dipped below 40% for individuals between the ages of 25 and 34, contributing to a larger demand for renters in urban centers
• - Because of rising rental rates, renters are staying in housing on average for a longer period of time, even if the housing is no longer suitable for living
• - Most importantly: since 1990, the median rent rate has increased 20% faster than the inflation rate, while median home price has increased by 41%
• - For Rochester, NY residents: Median rent rates have increased 16% ahead of inflation since 2011, or more than twice the rate of actual inflation in that time period
  (I was unable to find a report on median home value in Rochester, but I'm hoping to publish a brief article on median home value independently later this week, just have about 75,000 sales to categorize and analyze before then)

All of these rental rate and home price increases are occurring despite an increase in real median income of only 3% for those of Extremely Low-Income, 5% for young adults age 25 to 34, and less than a percentage point for the average American household since 1990. (Please note: "real median income" considers inflation with the increase in rental rates.)

All of this is occurring while homelessness is increasing in metropolitan areas with the fastest increase in rental rates, while the homelessness nationally has decreased by roughly 13% since 2010.

I encourage those interested in pursuing this topic further to read the links above, as well as Glynn, Byrne, and Culhane's 2018 article on housing cost burden compared to homelessness rates.