Price inflation isn’t here if you’re living in a tent under a tree down by the river…
A new Harvard report finds that close to half of renters in the United States are having a difficult time making their monthly rental payments.
According to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the number of cost-burdened tenants, renters who spend more than one-third of their income on rent, increased to 21.3 million people in 2014. And more than one-quarter (26 percent) are considered “severely cost burdened” and thus spend more than half of their income on rent.
The report also discovered that families paid more than half of their income on rent went on to spend 38 percent less on food and 55 percent less on healthcare.
What’s the problem? Rising price inflation, stagnant wages and soaring demand.
Between the years 2001 and 2014, rents have gone up seven percent, while household incomes have fallen nine percent. Meanwhile, demand for rental units means the national vacancy rate is at a 30-year low, which is helping boost prices even higher.
Although many point to low-income households as the biggest victims in this rental market, middle class households are gradually having a harder time dropping off a check to the landlord. Twenty-one percent of households with an income between $45,000 and $75,000 are burdened when it comes to the rent.
Despite the growing problems for millions of tenants, there isn’t enough supply to cover the demand. The economic collapse a few years ago prompted record demand in rental units as 37 percent of households are renting, which is a 45-year high.
This report comes as Harvard projected in September that 13 million Americans will spend more than half of their income on rent, and a Zillow report noted that renters are spending a record-high 30 percent of their income on rent.
–AM
The government and banks caused the housing crisis of 2008, to get control of the real estate through foreclosure.
Now they have control of the rental market, also.
Sounds about right. And with green “rail” they get to gentrify (“Elysium”) via TOD, transit-oriented-development.. That’s why there’s so many luxury high-rise developments breeding like rats along rail lines. Agenda 21 as crony capitalism (communism)? As we all go homeless eventually. Maybe we’ll all end up in camps to contain a burgeoning underclass (the 99%)?
You may be right. I think they want everyone to move out of the suburbs into the cities, were they can house us like cattle in 500 sq ft apartments, not the luxury apartments. This will give them (the government) the control over the masses, something the elite ruling class has always wanted. Then we can use public transportation or walk to work, shopping and we will not even need a car.
It is all about control, warned about in the book 1984. Then everyone will have the same income working the slave jobs of the elite. What a happy people we will be, NOT!