The typical New York City tenant continues to face financial trouble.
A newly released analysis of 2021 city housing data finds that one in three households are spending at least half their income on rent, while 55% are spending about a third of their earnings to stay in their apartments.
A report from the nonprofit Community Service Society finds about 1.2 million households in the five boroughs in 2021 are considered “rent burdened,” a term coined by the federal government when it comes to how much people should pay for housing.
Meanwhile, about 34% of New York City tenants were “severely rent-burdened,” meaning they gave at least half their income to their landlord, the report shows.
The latest figures reflect a trend dating back nearly two decades, with the majority of New York City renters spending at least 30% of their income on rent since 2005.
CSS examined granular data on rents, housing conditions and tenant characteristics recently released by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and U.S. Census Bureau as part of a survey process conducted every few years. Their analysis reveals the ongoing extent of New York City’s affordable housing crisis as a homelessness and median rents continue to surge.
The analysis found the situation was most dire for the poorest New Yorkers. About 84% of the 475,000 households earning below the federal poverty line — about $25,000 for a family of three — were severely rent burdened at the time of 2021 survey.
“That basically means that every single family that’s in this situation is on the brink of eviction in any given month,” said CSS housing policy analyst Oksana Mironova. “That’s staggering.”
Unpaid rent mounted during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to more than 200,000 eviction filings across the five boroughs. City marshals have carried out more than 10,000 evictions since a freeze on legal lockouts ended at the start of 2022, according to data tracked and mapped by Gothamist.
Meanwhile, the…
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