Dive Brief:
- The housing burdens on a single person renting a studio apartment can vary widely from place to place, depending on the median rent and income in a given area — and on gender, according to a study from New York City-based listing service RentHop.
- New York City is the least affordable city for single renters overall. With a $3,308 median rent for a studio apartment and a median nonfamily income of $55,810, a single occupant may spend 71.13% of their income on housing. Wichita, Kansas, is the most affordable, with a median studio rent of $565 and a housing burden of only 17.65%.
- However, when the city’s median incomes are separated by gender, single renters in New York City who are women could end up spending 79.42% of their median income on the median studio rent, compared to 60.99% for single men, as a man’s median income there is higher than a woman’s. Overall, the housing burden for single women is 124% higher than for men in major U.S. cities, according to RentHop.
Dive Insight:
Out of all renter households, 9.1 million, or 19.7%, are single women living alone, while 18.6% are single men living alone, according to data collected by iProperty Management.
While wage discrimination based on sex has been prohibited by federal law in the U.S. since 1963, the gender pay gap is an ongoing and well-documented phenomenon. As of 2023, women working full time year-round are paid 83.7% of a man’s full-time year-round salary on average, according to the Department of Justice.
The gap is more pronounced with Black and Hispanic women, who on average earn 67% and 57%, respectively, of the average salary of a White, non-Hispanic man.
Least affordable cities for single renters
| City | Median salary | Median studio rent | Housing cost burden |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York City | $55,810 | $3,308 | 71.35% |
| Miami | $48,826 | $1,986 | 48.81% |
| Detroit | $25,449 | $895 | 42.20% |
| Boston | $75,252 | $2,350 | 37.47% |
| Philadelphia | $41,080 | $1,265 | 36.94% |
SOURCE: RentHop
Most affordable cities for single renters
| City | Median salary | Median studio rent | Housing cost burden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wichita, Kansas | $38,412 | $565 | 17.65% |
| Minneapolis | $54,558 | $929 | 20.43% |
| Colorado Springs, Colorado | $53,185 | $910 | 20.53% |
| Seattle | $83,237 | $1,450 | 20.90% |
| Columbus, Ohio | $48,759 | $850 | 20.92% |
SOURCE: RentHop
El Paso, Texas, has the widest rent burden gap between single men and women. Women would need to spend 34.51% of their median income to afford a median studio apartment rent in the city, while men would only need to spend 18.12% of their median income on the same unit — meaning the housing burden for women is 1.9 times higher than for men..
Among all U.S. renter households, a record high 21.6 million — or 49% — were considered “cost-burdened” in 2023, meaning that they had spent 30% or more of their income on rent, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Of this number, 11.6 million spent more than half of their income on rent.
While rent growth has accelerated in recent years, the national average multifamily rent has fallen $17 in the last five months and growth slowed to 0.3% for the whole of 2023.
