Affordability issues are not limited to the highest-cost markets or a handful of states. With more than 30 percent of its renters experiencing severe cost burdens, Augusta, GA is among the ten metropolitan areas with the highest rates of severe burdens for renters, for example. While Florida, California, and Hawaii had the highest shares of renters facing cost burdens, at least 37% of renter households in every state across the nation were cost-burdened in 2014.3 High levels of cost burdens are also not confined to larger metropolitan areas. Almost 12 million households living outside the top 100 metropolitan areas are cost-burdened, about half of whom are severely burdened.

There are obvious reasons to be concerned about the escalating costs of housing and the myriad of ways it affects people. Households spending large portions, even half or more of their incomes on housing, face difficult tradeoffs in how to meet their basic needs with what remains. For example, severely cost-burdened families with children who are in the bottom quartile of income spend 75 percent less on healthcare than non-burdened families in the same income quartile. Low-income and severely burdened seniors also cut back drastically on healthcare, spending 60 percent less than other low-income seniors. High housing costs affect where people live, and may constrain families with children to neighborhoods and locations that do not support healthy child development, or upward economic mobility.