The rent is really damn high, and getting higher.
A new study from Harvard University and Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing advocate, found almost 30 percent of households will be “severely cost-burdened” by 2025, paying more than half their income as rent.
The number of households in this situation climbed from just 3 million in 2013 to 11.2 million in 2013, around one in four renters.
The report partly blamed temporary factors like the housing bubble and Great Recession, which have slowed incomes, the Wall Street Journal reported. But it also highlighted the demographic growth of populations that tend to rent, like Hispanics and millenials, many of whom were unemployed or underemployed in the mid-20s and early-30s, the time when previous generations ceased renting. [WSJ] – Ariel Stulberg