In Los Angeles and New York City, more than half of renters are now what’s called “cost-burdened,” which means they’re spending more than 30% of their income on rent. But this isn’t just a question of high rents in big, expensive cities: In Troy, Alabama, population 19,000, more than 62% of renters now spend too much on rent.
“This is a really geographically dispersed problem, and it pops up in different places for different reasons, but it’s basically a national issue,” says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, the lead author of a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies that maps out where Americans struggle most to pay for rental houses and apartments across the country.
