PRICED OUT

Study: Rent affordability crisis is climbing income ladder

Boston and the country are failing to build their way out of a housing crisis where rents are becoming less affordable to people of increasingly higher incomes, a new report for Boston’s Joint Center for Housing Studies shows.

“Despite the strong economy, the number and share of renters burdened by housing costs rose last year after a couple of years of modest improvement,” says Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “And while the poorest households are most likely to face this challenge, renters earning decent incomes have driven this recent deterioration in affordability.”

Rental prices rose 150% between 2010 and the third quarter of 2019, according to the consumer price index, with higher-income households accounting for much of the growth in rental demand — proof that America’s rental affordability crisis is climbing the income ladder.

The report shows that new rental construction remains near the highest levels in three decades. But with a growing share of buildings intended for the high end of the market, building booms in cities like Boston and elsewhere have done little to alleviate the pressures of rising rents, the report shows.

The problem is even more obvious ins Boston, where rents are now the thirdhighest in the nation, according to a December analysis by Zumper that places median one-bedroom monthly rent at $2,500. To afford an apartment at that price, renters would have to earn more than $105,000 per year to avoid being “rent-burdened” — a federal definition that describes people paying more than one-third of their income toward living expenses.

More than 30,000 new residences have been built or permitted in Boston since 2014. The Walsh administration says 20% of those are categorized as affordable, but housing advocates are lobbying for a change in the city’s Inclusionary Development Policy that would require at least one-third of all new residential construction to be affordable.

The report shows that renting has become more common among those traditionally more likely to own their home, further constraining the already strapped market.

“Rising rents are making it increasingly difficult for households to save for a down payment and become homeowners,” says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a research associate at the center and lead author of the new report. “Young, college-educated households with high incomes are really driving current rental demand.”