A threshold has been crossed in the American housing story: new research reveals that one in five renters — including those with stable jobs and middle-class incomes — could not pay their full rent on time last year. What was long framed as a crisis of poverty has become a crisis of structure, as rents have climbed far beyond what wages, across broad swaths of the income spectrum, can reliably meet. The old assumption that a decent salary insulated a household from housing precarity has quietly collapsed, and with it, the political and policy frameworks built upon that assumption.
Rent Crisis Spreads to Middle-Income Americans as 1 in 5 Struggle to Pay
One in five renters struggled to afford housing, creating financial stress and potential housing instability for millions of households.