More Than Half of Renter Families Are Now Cost-Burdened, Zillow Data Shows

Rent is eating paychecks across the country. Zillow data shows 54.1% of renter families in the U.S. are now considered rent-burdened, meaning they hand over more than 30% of their income just to keep a roof over their heads, according to CBS News. For families with kids under 18, the number is 54%. Millions of families are affected. The national median annual rent for a two-bedroom home sits at $21,480, per Zillow. In New York City it's $57,000 a year, or $4,750 a month, which is more than two-thirds of the city's median household income, according to 2023 Census Bureau data cited by CBS News. San Jose isn't far behind at $47,136 a year. San Francisco runs $38,400. Boston comes in at $38,340. These are what regular working families are actually paying to live near their jobs. Who gets hit hardest Low-income renters are getting crushed the worst. More than eight in 10 renters earning under $30,000 a year were cost-burdened in 2024, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. For these households, rent alone can consume nearly the entire budget before groceries, gas, or a doctor's visit even enter the picture. Why this keeps happening Kenny Lee, senior economist at Zillow and StreetEasy, told CBS News the core problem isn't a lack of land. It's zoning restrictions and regulatory red tape that have created a backlog of construction projects, especially in the markets where rental demand is strongest. "Until those barriers come down, supply can't catch up," Lee said. "When you have a lot of people competing for too few homes, prices go up, particularly for bigger apartments that are already in scarce supply." CBS News reports the housing market faces a shortfall of 4.7 million homes, a hole created by roughly two decades of underbuilding that started after the 2008 financial crisis. That shortage doesn't just hit buyers. It pushes more people into renting, which then squeezes the rental market even harder. Government-imposed limits on where and how much housing can get built are a major factor in why rent keeps climbing. Local zoning boards and permitting processes have made it slow and expensive to build, especially in the high-demand coastal and tech-hub cities where the numbers above are worst. Democratic-run cities like San Francisco and New York and Republican-leaning suburbs alike have all layered on restrictive zoning over decades. The problem is bipartisan in origin, which means the fix needs to be too. Readers should treat any claim of a newly enacted federal housing law with caution until it is confirmed by primary sources such as congressional records or an official bill number. If such a measure exists or is signed into law, the honest follow-up questions remain the same: which zoning rules would it actually preempt, on what timeline, and in which cities would builders see real permitting relief first? A policy that merely 'will help eventually' isn't much comfort to a family already spending 30, 40, or 50% of its income on rent right now. What's still unresolved Zillow's finding that roughly half of renters have been cost-burdened "since the pandemic," in Lee's words, suggests this isn't a temporary spike that will self-correct. It's a structural supply problem that predates COVID and has outlasted it. The open question is whether any future federal action would actually force local governments to loosen zoning, or whether such measures would mostly offer funding and incentives that cities can still slow-walk. No verified data currently shows how many new construction permits, if any, have resulted from federal policy changes tied to this issue. Until such data is published and confirmed, "help is coming" remains a promise, not a documented result.