The United States is short 4 million housing units, with a particular dearth of starter homes, moderately priced apartments in low-rises, and family-friendly dwellings. Interest rates are high, which has stifled construction and pushed up the cost of mortgages. As a result, more Americans are renting, and roughly half of those households are spending more than a third of their income on shelter.
As rents climb, the once-romanticized vision of living alone and eating your first cup of noodles in an unfurnished apartment recently started to feel like a dream of the past. But now, the rent-burdened generation may see some hope. The " Carrie Bradshaw Index," (named after the fictional Sex and the City character), released by The Economist, ranks 100 of the country's major cities by affordability for people who are chasing that solo-living dream, from the most expensive to the least.
My trusty spreadsheet identified this affordability challenge by analyzing 2024 Census Bureau housing data for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. These latest figures detail swings in who's renting, how much they pay, and how many tenant households are financially swamped by rental expenses - that's rent plus utilities exceeding 50% of incomes. Remember, California is the nation's largest rental market with 6.1 million tenant households.