Curbed reports that a recent study by advocacy group Home1 shows more than 11 million Americans spending more than half their paycheck on rent. Harvard University researchers add fuel to the fire by pointing out that nearly half of all renters were cost burdened in 2016 as compared to 1960. The National Low Income Housing Coalition says that there are no counties in the U.S. where a minimum wage earner can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.
Even as the economy continues to grow and the housing market rebounds from the Great Recession, Americans face widening inequality, and, for many, an inability to comfortably pay for housing as wage growth stagnates and housing costs continue to climb.
The simple answer to the rent being “too damn high” is, of course, to build more housing. But the reality is significantly more complicated than simply jump-starting construction. A variety of market forces, policy decisions, and demographic changes have converged to make building affordable housing a difficult, and politically fraught, proposition.
And how did a nation that prides itself on opportunity become one in which a shortage of affordable housing options seems to have no immediate solution and where so many renters and buyers struggle?
