A record number of tenants couldn’t afford rent in 2022, according to a new study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
The report found that in 2022, half of American renters—22.4 million households—were cost-burdened, spending a third or more of their income on housing costs.
Out of the cost-burdened renters, 12.1 million households spent more than half of their incomes on housing costs.
The report follows several years of historically high rent increases that pushed rents above pre-pandemic levels, where they have stubbornly remained.
In the third quarter of 2023, rents grew .4% across the country, compared to a 15% rent increase in early 2022, the report said.
“That means that those rent levels we achieved during the pandemic aren’t getting worse, but they’re also not falling,” Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, said during a panel discussion on the report Thursday. “So over time, we’ll see some easing of the problem as we have incomes hopefully outpacing those rent growths.”
Low and mid-income renters wonder when that will happen after years of watching rents skyrocket as their paychecks failed to do the same.
From 2001 to 2022, rents grew 21% when adjusted for inflation, the report found. During the same time period, renters’ incomes rose just 2%.
