More Americans Struggling to Pay the Rent
As the portion of Americans renting rather than owning their homes has grown in recent years, so has the number of Americans for whom the monthly rent check has become a burden.
In 2013, almost half of all renters were spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, with more than a quarter paying half their income to their landlord, according the "State of the Nation’s Housing 2015" report issued today by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Rising rents aren’t just impacting low-income consumers. One in five renters earning $45,000-$75,000 is paying at least a third of their income in rent.
Related: There’s Only One Way Rents Will Go: Sky High
The increase in rental rates represents a byproduct of the falling home ownership rate, which dropped to 63.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, the lowest level since 1989. The rate has fallen for the past eight years and appears poised to continue its decline.
That puts the 2010s on pace to be the strongest decade for rental growth in history, and the national vacancy rate fell to just 7.6 percent, its lowest level in 20 years, according to the Harvard report. The trend reflects increased demand from millennials, as well as a growing preference for renting in households aged 45-64 and higher-income households.
Rents rose 3.2 percent last year, twice the rate of overall inflation, spurring builders to begin construction on more multi-family units than in any years since 1989. “And if job growth continues to pick up, we could see even more demand, as young adults move out of their parents’ homes and into their own apartments,” Joint Center senior research associate Daniel McCue said in a statement.
GOP Tax Cuts Getting Less Popular, Poll Finds
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s signing the Republican tax overhaul into law, and public opinion of the law is moving in the wrong direction for the GOP. A Monmouth University survey conducted earlier this month found that 34 percent of the public approves of the tax reform passed by Republicans late last year, while 41 percent disapprove. Approval has fallen by 6 points since late April and disapproval has slipped 3 points. The percentage of people who aren’t sure how they feel about the plan has risen from 16 percent in April to 24 percent this month.
Other findings from the poll of 806 U.S. adults:
- 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing; 67 percent disapprove
- 40 percent say the country is heading in the right direction, up from 33 percent in April
- Democrats hold a 7-point edge in a generic House ballot
Special Tax Break Zones Defined for All 50 States
The U.S. Treasury has approved the final group of opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for investments made in low-income areas. The zones were created by the tax law signed in December.
Bill Lucia of Route Fifty has some details: “Treasury says that nearly 35 million people live in the designated zones and that census tracts in the zones have an average poverty rate of about 32 percent based on figures from 2011 to 2015, compared to a rate of 17 percent for the average U.S. census tract.”
Click here to explore the dynamic map of the zones on the U.S. Treasury website.
Map of the Day: Affordable Care Act Premiums Since 2014
Axios breaks down how monthly premiums on benchmark Affordable Care Act policies have risen state by state since 2014. The average increase: $481.
Obamacare Repeal Would Lead to 17.1 Million More Uninsured in 2019: Study
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that if the Affordable Care Act were eliminated entirely, the number of uninsured would rise by 17.1 million — or 50 percent — in 2019. The study also found that federal spending would be reduced by almost $147 billion next year if the ACA were fully repealed.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since last November, and by all accounts the South Carolina conservative is none too happy with the agency charged with protecting citizens from fraud in the financial industry. The Hill recently wrote up “five ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency,” and they include dropping cases against payday lenders, dismissing three advisory boards and an effort to rebrand the operation as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — a move critics say is intended to deemphasize the consumer part of the agency’s mission.
Mulvaney recently scored a small victory on the last point, changing the sign in the agency’s building to the new initials. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist,” Mulvaney told Congress in April, and now he’s proven the point, at least when it comes to the sign in his lobby (h/t to Vox and thanks to Alan Zibel of Public Citizen for the photo, via Twitter).
