Families with kids are the most rent-burdened Americans

Nearly half of American renters now spend more than 30% of their income on rent, the level economists call cost-burdened. For families with children, it's worse. Zillow found that 54% of renter families with kids are burdened, against 49.7% of renters overall, in an analysis of Census data released this month.

The surprising part is the reason, and it isn't what you'd guess. It isn't that families earn less, it's that the apartment they need costs more.

The price of the extra bedroom

A single person can rent a one-bedroom. A family with two kids usually can't, and the jump from a one-bedroom to a three-bedroom is where the budget breaks. Our data puts a number on that jump, and it's steep in every major city.

In San Diego, a family that needs a third bedroom pays about $20,148 more a year than a single renter in a one-bedroom, and that's before anyone earns a raise to cover it. A household's income doesn't automatically grow because a second kid arrives, so the same paycheck stretches across a much bigger rent, and the 30% line gets crossed.

Why the whole market keeps squeezing

Kenny Lee, a senior economist at Zillow and StreetEasy, tied it back to supply. The country is short about 4.7 million homes after two decades of underbuilding that started with the 2008 crash, and larger apartments are the scarcest slice of all. "When you have a lot of people competing for too few homes, prices go up, particularly for bigger apartments that are already in scarce supply," he told CBS News.

The pain lands hardest at the bottom. More than eight in ten renters earning under $30,000 a year were cost-burdened in 2024, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Nationally, the median renter now pays about $21,480 a year for housing, and the share of burdened renters has held near half since the pandemic even as rent growth slowed.

A bipartisan housing-supply law passed earlier this year is meant to ease the shortage over time, though analysts expect little immediate relief on price. Until more family-sized apartments actually get built, the extra bedroom stays expensive. For the places where the squeeze is tightest, see our ranking of the most rent-burdened cities, and check where your own budget lands with the 30% rule.

Sources

• CBS News, Americans' paychecks are getting swallowed by rent (August 14, 2026), for the national figures and the Kenny Lee interview

• Zillow, Rent burden hits families with children hardest (August 13, 2026), for the 54% and 49.7% burden rates

• Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, for the low-income burden rate

• RentDataNow rent data by bedroom size (Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026)