Housing

NBC News -  Paying rent has always had its sting, but it’s becoming a heavier burden for millions more Americans. Nearly 4 in 10 middle-class renter households are cost-burdened, an NBC News analysis of Census Bureau data found. That’s up nearly 20% since 2019. A cost-burdened household is defined as one paying 30% or more of pre-tax income on rent and housing costs, widely used as a threshold for affordability. “[It’s] been a fact of life for lower-income renters for a long time,” one expert said. “It’s really just in the last five or six years where these numbers creep upwards for what we think of as middle-class renters.”