Report: Rural renters struggling during the pandemic

BOSTON (AP) — It’s not just urban dwellers who have faced difficulties paying the rent during the past year as the pandemic upended the economy.

Renters in rural New England have faced many of the same affordability challenges, according to a report released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s New England Public Policy Center.

While the pandemic may not be having as large a health impact on New England’s rural areas as it’s had on its cities, it’s having a similar economic impact due to businesses closures and restrictions on economic activity aimed at limiting the spread of the virus.

The share of jobs lost in rural New England communities has been large, even though these areas have seen fewer cases of COVID-19 relative to their population size compared with the region’s urban areas, the report found.

That’s in contrast with the experience in much of the rest of the country, where rural areas nationally had seen more COVID-19 cases relative to their population size but had lost a smaller share of jobs.

Even after the pandemic ends, rural New England households likely will still face considerable affordability challenges, the report said.

The average cost of renting an apartment in rural communities is less than the average cost in urban communities, but incomes are lower in rural areas, in part because higher-paying jobs are less abundant.

And while there are fewer renter households in rural New England than in urban

areas, a comparable share of the rural renters spend more than 30% of their annual household income on rent and utilities.

The region’s rural areas had 2,839 total coronavirus

cases per 100,000 residents as of January 2021, yet the number of jobs in those places had decreased more than 6% compared with one year earlier.

That’s compared to nationally, where rural areas had seen 8,204 total cases per 100,000 residents but lost only about 3% of jobs

over the same period.

The report also found that the pandemic has the potential to further reduce housing affordability in rural New England as pandemic-related job losses make rural renter households just as likely as urban renter households to fall behind on rent.