Renters are getting squeezed the most in these countries

June 10, 2022

The Biden Administration announced a plan to grow the nation’s affordable housing stock. According to CNN, the new policies aim at leveraging federal funds to encourage zoning changes, increase the construction of multifamily homes and support manufactured housing and housing rehabilitation.

According to a survey of industrialized nations by the OECD, low-income tenants in the U.S. are among those struggling the most with housing costs. Almost half of all low-income renters in the U.S. spend more than 40 percent of their income on housing. This puts the country toward the top of the list of the least affordable housing markets in the OECD; 30 percent or one third of income after tax spent on housing is generally considered the maximum amount any renter should pay.

The data refers to private renters as those on the subsidized market are expected not to have their resources overstretched by rent. While the OECD has no comparable figure of how many U.S. residents pay subsidized rent, Department of Housing and Urban Development data suggests that close to 3 percent of Americans benefit from the department’s housing assistance.

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Burdens for Renters

The OECD survey was carried out before the pandemic, in the aftermath of which high inflation has seen cost of living, including rents, soar even higher. The data also shows the inability of low-income Americans to buy their own home instead of paying high rents.

While this seems counter-intuitive, buying instead of renting is, or at least was, a way out from under the rent burden for low-income people in several OECD countries. In many places with high housing costs, burdensome mortgages are actually less common than burdensome rents, but this could also be due to the fact that fixed mortgage payments keep running for years at the same rates, while rent increases would display in the data more immediately.

10. Latvia

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 7.9%

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9. Germany

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 14.4%

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8. Mexico

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 16.5%

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7. France

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 18.6%

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6. Poland

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 26.2%

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5. Canada

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 34.3%

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4. United States

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 45.6%

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3. Spain

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 45.7%

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2. Great Britain

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 47.5%

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1. New Zealand

Share of low-income private tenants spending more than 40% of their income on housing (in percent): 56%

Methodology

Statista used date from OECD. The data is from 2019 (the latest available). Low income was defined as being in the bottom income distribution. You can find more information here.

This article originally appeared on Statista.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.

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