Rising rental prices hurt new U.S. workers

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Rising rental prices hurt new U.S. workers

WASHINGTON D.C. Young workers in the U.S. have been the most harmed by surging rental prices, with many taking roommates or working additional jobs to afford housing costs.

According to Census Bureau forecasts last week, household rents increased by 10 percent from levels before the COVID- 19 epidemic in 2021, according to Census Bureau forecasts.

The median U.S. rent was $1,037 in 2021, up from $941 in 2019 according to data from the Bureau's annual American Community Survey.

The most affected are recent college graduates and other new entrants to the work force, those with little savings and unable to buy a house.

Maeve Kozlark, a 23-year-old New York University doctoral student, lived in an apartment in Queens borough in New York City with a door that would not lock for a year, and the landlord's refusal to fix the lock forced him to make a TikTok video.

One year and 230,000 views later, the lock was still broken when the landlord announced a $1,000 hike on top of the existing rent of $2,500, as reported by Kozlark.

Kozlark, who has found a new apartment in Queens costing $3,300, began our crazy search to find something that was affordable and not a shoebox.

In Austin, Texas, 22 year-old Skyler Lee signed a one-year lease for a two-bedroom apartment for herself and her boyfriend, costing $1,950 per month.

One month after moving in, comparable apartments in the building were being rented out for $2,400 per month, which is what Lee expects to pay when she renews her lease next year.

The rental prices of usually larger properties owned by management companies in the professionally managed sector have risen even more sharply.

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies said at the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, annual rent growth in this sector hit 11.6 percent, which is three times the figure in the five years prior to the COVID-19 epidemic. As demand for post-pandemic jobs increased, vacancy rates fell to their lowest levels since 1984.

Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate at the Harvard housing center, said it is a truly unprecedented market in a lot of ways, as quoted by Reuters.

Minority groups are likely to be impacted as well. Ingrid Gould Ellen, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said black renters are less likely to have parents who own homes, a key source of wealth in the country, and can help them.

According to a survey conducted by Zillow, renters of color are required to pay higher security deposits and more application fees than white renters.