About half of the nation’s renters said rising consumer prices were “very stressful” for them, according to a new analysis from researchers at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
The analysis, based on data from U.S. Census Bureau’s household pulse surveys from July to December of last year, found inflation’s strain was particularly acute among low-income renters, as well as Black and Hispanic tenants. Yet almost all renter households — 93% — had seen higher prices for goods or services in their region in the two-month period before they were polled, researchers Whitney Airgood-Obrycki and Peyton Whitney wrote in a blog post on their findings Monday.
“A full 52% of all renters reported that recent price increases in consumer goods were very stressful while an additional 24% found them to be moderately stressful,” Airgood-Obrycki and Whitney said.
The good news: U.S. inflation appears to be cooling off somewhat, with the consumer price index up 5% in March compared to a year earlier. That was the lowest annual level seen since May 2021, and far below the pandemic peak of 9.1% from last June.
Rent growth, a big driver of that inflation, has also softened from the sky-high hikes of early 2022. In fact, a recent Redfin
RDFN,
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analysis stated the country’s median asking rent had just experienced its first annual decline in three years after falling 0.4% between March 2022 and March 2023 to reach $1,937. Otherwise, there hasn’t been an annual drop in rents since March 2020, according to Redfin.
But the mental and financial strain from price increases may linger for some Americans. Researchers at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found in their analysis Monday that almost two-thirds of renters making less than $25,000 reported that inflation was very stressful for them. Fifty-eight percent of Black households and 61% of Hispanic households reported similar levels of stress, compared to 48% of white households and 40% of Asian households, the researchers said.
To deal with changing prices, renters said they’d turned to stores with lower prices, ate out less, delayed major costs, and even put off medical treatments, Airgood-Obrycki and Whitney wrote in their analysis.
“Just 7% of the renters who noted prices were increasing in their area moved to less expensive housing, perhaps speaking to both the cost of moving, the tightness of rental markets, and the lack of affordable options,” Airgood-Obrycki and Whitney said.
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