Dive Brief:
-
Rent and mortgage payments take a bigger bite out of take-home pay in Los Angeles in any other major U.S. city, according to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. The result: Half of Angelenos spend 30% or more of their paychecks on housing.
-
Hardest hit are renters, who fork over up to 48% of their income for apartments each month. And to be a homeowner, it'll cost you about 43% of a local’s salary. So as a result Los Angeles has the lowest homeownership rate among the 50 largest U.S. cities.
-
San Francisco and New York have higher home prices and rents than Los Angeles, but because incomes are higher in those cities, housing costs are more manageable.
Dive Insight:
High housing costs are driving middle- and low-income residents of the second-largest U.S. city to live in unsafe neighborhoods where rents are lower, although prices are on the rise even there. Others are making due in illegally converted garages, mobile homes, recreational vehicles and in their cars. One official estimates there are as many as 70,000 unpermitted housing units in the city.