Half of American renters are spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Not the broke ones. Double-shift nurses and warehouse workers pulling overtime in cities where a studio apartment costs more than a mortgage did twenty years ago. Twenty-two million households handing a third of every dollar to a landlord while the construction pipeline collapses and material costs climb 42% since 2020.
Nobody in Washington treats this like an emergency because nobody in Washington rents. The median member of Congress is worth well over a million dollars. They own property. Rising home values are their retirement plan. They are the landlord class voting on whether to build more housing, and they have voted no, every single session, for decades.
The people making under $30,000 are cost-burdened at 83%. Not a typo. Eighty-three percent. The market was supposed to fix this. It fixed itself a corner office and a dividend check.