Although rent growth has cooled this year, the national median rent is still 23% higher than it was just three years ago, and in some markets, the increase has been even more substantial. Newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that these rapid increases in housing costs have been taking a toll on affordability, via a new report by Apartment List.
As per the widely accepted metric of housing affordability, a household is labeled as “cost-burdened” when housing costs are more than 30% of their gross household income. Households spending over 50% of their income to monthly housing costs are categorized as “severely” cost-burdened.
Across the country, from 2014 to 2019, the number of cost-burdened renter households fell by 826,000, while the number of renter households who could comfortably afford their rent increased by 1.9 million. But in the following three years the ratio flipped. The number of cost-burdened renter households has increased by 1.9 million from 2019 to 2022, while the number of non-burdened renter households fell by 957,000.
And currently? There are 21.8 million cost-burdened renter households, more than ever before, and rates have risen in virtually every market—including Chicago.
Here are Apartment List’s findings:
- As of the latest estimates, 606,000 renter households in Chicago (50%) are cost-burdened, up from 46% in 2019.
- Twenty-seven percent of renter households in Chicago are “severely” cost-burdened.
- Between 2019 and 2022 the median rent in Chicago increased by 14% while the median income of renter households increased by 13%.
Click here for the full report.
