The first apartment I ever rented, the summer I was 18, set me back $125 a month, plus one third of the utilities. As best as I can remember, my share of the utilities averaged about $30-50 a month, depending on the season. Call it $175 a month for housing, then. At that time I was working at the Woolco department store in Cedar Falls, 40 hours a week, for the princely wage of $3.25 an hour. Call it $500 per month, gross. Let’s say $425 net. So my housing cost me about 30 percent of my income.
At that time I don’t recall seeing that as too onerous – but I was young, single, and had nobody else to feed, clothe, or entertain, and I rapidly worked my way out of that starting point. But today, under the Biden/Harris economy, the Census Bureau tells us that many American renters are paying even more than 30 percent of their income on housing. That’s a problem.
Nearly half of renters in the U.S. – over 21 million households – spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2023, according to new Census Bureau data released Thursday.
The bureau said that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considers households cost-burdened when more than 30% of their income is spent on rent, mortgage payments, and other housing costs. The bureau also said the data shows the amount of a rented household’s income that goes toward housing costs differs by race.
“Housing costs rose between 2022 and 2023 for both homeowners and renters. The median cost of housing for renters rose from $1,354 to $1,406 (after adjusting for inflation),” said Molly Ross, a survey statistician with the U.S. Census Bureau. “And new data from the 2023 [American Community Survey], 1-year estimates show that the share of a rented household’s income that goes towards these housing costs differs by householder race.”
Rental properties, like any other commodity, are governed by the law of supply and demand. When the supply of a commodity does not meet the demand, prices increase. That’s what is happening here, and there are two likely reasons for the increase:
- Excessive regulation, zoning ordinances, and endless studies and permitting before construction are making it harder and more expensive to build affordable multi-family housing. This depresses supply.
- Since 2021, there has been an influx of millions of illegal immigrants, many of whom are being housed at government expense in properties that would otherwise be available to American families. This, again, depresses supply.
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Both of these reasons are, by and large, caused by Democrat policies in Democratic jurisdictions.
Kamala Harris intends to address this by throwing money at the problem. This is a mistake, and if she listened to reputable economists instead of bleating sycophants, she’d know this. But every dollar of federal money thrown into subsidies and grants just serves to raise prices even higher, following which Democrat politicians will call for more subsidies and grants, forming a never-ending cycle of stupidity.
Of course, there will always be low-income Americans who struggle with housing costs. That’s inevitable. There will always be poor people among us, just as there will always be rich people among us, and in large part that is because poor people keep doing the things that make them poor, and rich people keep doing the things that make them rich. There are lifecycle elements as well, as by and large people in their 20s have less disposable income than people in their 50s. But the point is, if there is to be a solution here, if there is to be a way to provide affordable housing to reduce – we will never eliminate – the number of people spending almost a third of their income on housing, then we need to increase the supply of cheap housing. We can do that by removing roadblocks to development. We can also do it by ending the insane practice of housing, at taxpayer expense, people who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place.
One of the 2024 presidential candidates understands this. The other does not. We should vote accordingly.
