The tough state of renters

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies - Despite a slight improvement from 2014, fully one-third of US households paid more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing in 2015. Renters continue to be more likely to face cost burdens. Indeed, the number of cost-burdened renters (21 mil- lion) considerably outstrips the number of cost-burdened owners (18 million) even though nearly two-thirds of US households own their homes. While the share of renters with housing cost burdens was down 1.0 percentage point in 2015, the decline reflects an increase in the number of higher-income renters rather than improved affordability among low- and moderate-income households.