The New American Dream Under Obama: RENTING

Policy: The heavy federal hand in the housing market has been a disaster. Despite spending more than $13,000 for every household, Washington has record low homeownership to show for it, even among the middle class.

In fact, a just-released report by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies not only finds more middle-class families renting but many also struggling to make rent, as homeownership rates plunge lower than ever.

With last year’s drop in the homeownership rate to just 
64.5%, nearly all the gains over the previous two decades 
have been erased. AP

This is as shocking as it is depressing. It used to be that the middle class owned homes. Now it's increasingly feeling "the strain of rising rents," the reports says, as foreclosures and stagnant incomes drive more Americans into apartments and home rentals.

With last year's drop in the homeownership rate to just 64.5%, nearly all the gains over the previous two decades have been erased. In fact, the study says, the number of homeowners fell for the eighth straight year, and the downtrend is expected to continue.

Meanwhile, this decade is shaping up to be the strongest in history for renting. And it's not just millennials fueling rental market growth . It's also the middle class.

Households aged 45-64 have accounted for about twice the share of renter growth as households under 35. And households in the top half of the national income range — where you expect to find high homeownership rates — contributed a whopping 43% of the growth among renters, Harvard found.

Even more troubling, "cost burdens are climbing the income ladder, affecting growing shares of not just low-income renters but moderate- and middle-income renters as well," said the study, "The State of the Nation's Housing 2015."

The cost-burdened share of renters with incomes in the $30,000-$45,000 range rose to 45% between 2003 and 2013, while 1 in 5 renters earning $45,000-$75,000 is now cost-burdened as well.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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