Harvard Report Says Blacks, Latinos Hit Hardest by High Rental Costs: More than 12 million families pay half their income on housing

By Charlene Crowell | Trice Edney Wire Credit: Maria DiPietro (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A new report on rental housing from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) makes clear why so many people are dissatisfied with the nation’s economy. Released in late January and entitled,& America’s Rental Housing 2024, the report documents how ever-rising rental costs are burdening people in every state of the country. In 2022, a record high of 22.4 million cost-burdened renter households rose by two million families since 2019. Affordable housing& should cost no& more than 30 percent of total household income. “Median rents have risen nearly continuously since 2001in inflation-adjusted terms and are 21 percent higher as of 2022,” states& JCHS. “Meanwhile, renters’ incomes have risen just 2 percent during the same period…Among cost-burdened households, 12.1 million had housing costs that consumed more than half of their income, an all-time high for severe burdens.”& At the same time, eviction filings have returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 as relief measures expired. A record-setting 653,100 people were unhoused on a given night in January 2023, an increase of nearly 71,000 people in just one year. Once more, Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately impacted. Black people are 37...