Table of Contents
Key Insights
- Compared to a decade ago, a greater share of renters in the County of Los Angeles were high-income, earning over $150,000, a sign that more high-income households were remaining renters for longer as barriers to homeownership mount.
- In 2024, more than half (57%) of renters in Los Angeles County were rent-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on rent, and 30% of renters were severely rent-burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on rent.
- Low-income renters were far more likely to be rent-burdened than others, highlighting the limited availability of affordable rental housing in the county. In 2024, 92% of renters earning less than $50,000 were rent-burdened.
- The share of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 who were severely rent-burdened has doubled over the past decade, indicating that housing costs are increasingly affecting those further up the income distribution.
- Black renters have consistently faced the highest rent burden levels in the county; Hispanic/Latino renters face the second highest level of burden among race/ethnic groups, but have also seen the steepest declines over the last decade.
Across the nation, rental unaffordability is reaching record highs, and the County of Los Angeles stands out as one of the least affordable markets. In 2024, 56% of renters in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area1 spent more than a third of their income on housing, compared to 52% of renters nationally. Among the 10 largest U.S. metro areas, only Miami ranks worse on this measure (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2026). High housing costs strain households across the income spectrum, but fall hardest on those with the fewest resources.
This chapter examines rental housing affordability in Los Angeles County, focusing on how affordability dynamics differ across demographic groups. Readers will come away with a clearer understanding of the severity and persistence of rental housing unaffordability, and who is most affected by it today.
A Growing Affordability Crisis
Rental housing in Los Angeles County has long been less affordable than in the rest of the country, but its relative affordability has worsened significantly over time. As of 2024, the median rent in Los Angeles was 35% higher than the national median, while the median renter’s income was only 27% higher. A number of economic shocks in recent decades, from the Great Recession2 to the COVID-19 pandemic, have further eroded rental housing affordability. In the dashboard below, explore how rents, incomes, and rent burdens have changed in both Los Angeles County and across the U.S. since 1980 (all dollar figures are shown in 2024 dollars).
The Current Picture of Renter Affordability
Over the past decade, median renter incomes in Los Angeles County grew faster than median rents – a reversal of the longstanding trend of stagnant incomes and rising housing costs. At first glance, this shift suggests improved conditions for renters, but the full picture is more complex. The increase in median renter income may reflect rising incomes among existing renters, more high-income households entering the Los Angeles rental market, and perhaps lower-income renters moving away from Los Angeles.
Between 2014 and 2024, the share of renter households earning less than $50,000 (adjusted for inflation to 2024 dollars)3 declined from 48% in 2014 to 36% in 2024. The share of renter households earning over $150,000 grew from 10% in 2014 to 17% in 2024, making it the fastest-growing share among income groups. Although these patterns suggest upward mobility among a portion of renters may have occurred, they also signal a shifting rental landscape – one increasingly shaped by high-income households who, in earlier periods, may have transitioned into homeownership but now remain in the rental market, potentially placing upward pressure on rents and exacerbating affordability challenges for lower-income renters. See the changing income composition of renters in the chart below.
As homeownership becomes increasingly out of reach for Angelenos across the income spectrum (see Homeowners chapter), even the highest-income households are renting longer or by choice. Additionally, Los Angeles County is attracting more renter households from outside the region. In 2024, about 72,200 renter households had moved to the county within the past year, down from about 75,000 households in 2023, but slightly more than moved in a decade ago in 2014.4 These newly arrived renters are also more likely to be high-income than they used to be: In 2024, one in four had household incomes above $150,000, compared with 22% in 2023, and just 16% a decade ago, in 2014.
Despite high-income renters moving in, households earning less than $50,000 still make up the largest share of the renter population: 36% in 2024, compared with 37% one year earlier and 48% a decade ago. Yet just 17% of the current rental housing stock costs $1,250/month or less, an amount that would be considered affordable to households with incomes under $50,000.5 The share of the rental housing stock affordable to those earning under $50,000 is unchanged from 2023 but remains substantially lower than in 2014 (26%), when housing was more affordable in Los Angeles County. The chart below compares renter household incomes in 2024 to affordable rental units for each income group, highlighting the mismatch between what renters earn and what’s available in the rental housing stock.
More than 90% of Lower-Income Households are Rent Burdened
This mismatch between income and available affordable housing helps explain the persistently high rent burden rates in Los Angeles County, particularly among the lowest-income renters. In 2024, 92% of the county’s 668,000 renter households earning less than $50,000 were rent-burdened. By comparison, 62% of renters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 and 23% of those earning between $100,000 and $150,000 were rent-burdened. Over the past decade, the share of renters who are cost-burdened has either increased or remained stable across all income groups.
Severe rent burden is also heavily concentrated among low-income households. In 2024, 70% of renters with household incomes below $50,000 were severely rent-burdened, compared to just 14% of households in the next highest income bracket. Although households with higher incomes are less likely to be severely rent-burdened, the share of renters with household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 who are severely rent-burdened has doubled over the past decade, from 7% in 2014 to 14% in 2024. High housing costs are increasingly impacting those further up in the income distribution.
The chart below shows the share of Los Angeles County renters in each income group that were rent-burdened and severely rent-burdened in 2014 and 2024.
Recent survey data from LABarometer, a biannual survey tracking social and economic conditions among the same set of Los Angeles County residents over time, complements data from the large cross-sectional American Community Survey (ACS), which we use throughout this chapter. According to the most recent LABarometer Panel, 57% of renters are rent-burdened, and 34% are severely rent-burdened. Using LABarometer’s income brackets, renters earning less than $50,000 a year are far more likely to be rent-burdened (79%) and severely rent-burdened (55%) than renters earning $100,000 to $150,000 (26% and 12%, respectively), patterns broadly consistent with the ACS-based estimates above. The LABarometer data also offers insight into even lower-income renters, those making under $30,000 annually: of renters in Los Angeles County who spend more than 50% of their income on rent, nearly half are extremely low-income, earning below $30,000. Together, these two sources point to the same conclusion: efforts to reduce rent burdens and increase housing stability in Los Angeles County should focus on those with very low incomes.
Declining Cost Burdens for Hispanic/Latino Renters
Rent burden patterns vary not only by income level but also by race and ethnicity, reflecting longstanding structural inequities in Los Angeles County’s housing landscape.
Rent burden and severe rent burden rates have historically been elevated among Hispanic/Latino households but have been falling faster among them than for any other racial or ethnic group.6 In 2024, 57% of Hispanic/Latino renters were rent-burdened, down from 64% a decade ago. The share of severely cost-burdened Hispanic/Latino renters has also fallen sharply over this period, from 34% in 2014 to 29% in 2024.
These improvements reflect, in part, strong income growth among Hispanic/Latino renter households. Between 2014 and 2024, the median income for this group rose from around $46,400 to $64,000, a 38% increase, the largest of any racial/ethnic group. However, this pattern may also be a function of low-income Hispanic/Latino renters moving out of Los Angeles County, an area meriting additional research. The chart below shows median renter income by race/ethnicity of the head of household in 2014 and 2024.
Black Renters Face the Highest Housing Cost Burdens
As the figure above shows, Black renters have lower median incomes than any other large racial or ethnic group in the county, despite a 26% increase in their median household incomes over the past decade. As of 2024, American Indian and Alaskan Native households had the lowest median incomes in Los Angeles County, but because these households account for fewer than 2% of all renter households, the sample of these households is very small, and margins of error and year-over-year fluctuations are larger than for other racial and ethnic groups in the county.
In 2024, 67% of Black renter households were rent-burdened, the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group by a wide margin. By comparison, 52% of Asian/Pacific Islander households were rent-burdened, as were 54% of white renters and 57% of Hispanic/Latino renters. The share of households that are rent-burdened has been fairly constant across racial and ethnic groups over the past decade, with the exception of among Hispanic/Latino renters: In 2014, 64% of Hispanic/Latino renters were cost-burdened, seven percentage points worse than in 2024. Over the same period, the share of Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and white renters who were cost-burdened changed by fewer than two percentage points.
Trends in severe rent burden reveal some important shifts. In 2014, Black households were experiencing the highest levels of severe rent burden in Los Angeles County. Like Hispanic/Latino renters, Black households saw a decline in severe rent burden between 2014 and 2019, from 39% to 35%. But unlike Hispanic/Latino renters, who were able to maintain those lower levels of cost burden through the pandemic, Black households saw those gains unravel. In fact, Black renters were the only group for whom the share experiencing rent burden or severe rent burden increased from 2014 through 2024: By 2024, 40% of Black renter households were severely cost-burdened. The chart below shows rent burden and severe rent burden rates by race/ethnicity of the head of household in 2014 and 2024.
Severe rent burden increased for most groups in the years immediately after the pandemic, but the reversal was most pronounced for Black renters, who had been making steady gains in the pre-pandemic years. This setback reflects the enduring consequences of structural inequities: Communities that start out with fewer resources are hit hardest when crisis strikes. In a region where housing affordability remains precarious even in stable times, Black households continue to face the steepest and most persistent cost burdens.
Two-thirds of Older Adult Renters are Cost Burdened
Another group particularly vulnerable to affordability pressures is older adult renters, who are more likely to live on fixed or limited incomes and face growing challenges in the Los Angeles rental market.7 As the Baby Boomer generation continues to age into retirement, the number of older adults in Los Angeles County is rising (see the Population Characteristics chapter). Although nearly two-thirds of households headed by individuals over the age of 62 in the county are homeowners – many of whom own their homes outright and are less likely to be housing cost-burdened, in part because of California’s Proposition 13, which limits increases in property assessment values – the growing number of older renters8 faces a much more precarious housing landscape.
In 2024, about 380,400 households headed by an adult age 62 or older in Los Angeles County were renters, an increase of more than 80,550 households since 2014. Furthermore, two-thirds of older adult renters were rent-burdened, and 39% were severely rent-burdened in 2024. The share of older adults who are rent-burdened and severely rent-burdened has remained high over the past decade; in 2014, 68% of older adult renters were cost-burdened, and 42% were severely cost-burdened. Consistent with these findings, individual-level data from the LABarometer Panel survey show that adults age 60 and older account for just 12% of renters in Los Angeles but nearly one-quarter (24%) of those experiencing severe rent burdens. The result is a growing crisis of older adults experiencing homelessness, a trend examined in greater detail in the Houseless Angelenos chapter.
Contributors
- Authors
- Amalie Zinn, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Jared N. Schachner, USC Price School of Public Policy
- Research Team
- Cameron Yap, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Elizabeth Grubb, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Adela G Ortiz, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Christine Steinmann, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Christa Tang, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
- Evan Sandlin, LABarometer
- Kyla Thomas, LABarometer
Citations
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2026). The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026. Link
Footnotes
- The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) includes both Los Angeles County and Orange County. In Los Angeles County alone, 57% of renters were cost-burdened in 2024.
- The Great Recession refers to the global economic downturn that began in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009. It was the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent banking and financial crisis. The housing market crash, particularly the subprime mortgage crisis, led to widespread foreclosures, massive job losses, and a sharp decline in consumer wealth, severely impacting both the U.S. and global economies.
- “Adjusting for inflation to 2024 dollars” means using an inflation index, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), to account for changes in the purchasing power of money over time. This adjustment allows for a more accurate comparison of values from different years by expressing them in terms of the same dollar value.
- For SOLACHAN 2026, we updated our methodology to calculate this figure. Previously, we applied a share of households that lived in another identifiable county to the total number of renters that moved in the past year, which led us to wrongly attribute some households as movers from outside of LA County despite having incomplete data. In 2026 and moving forward, we directly calculated the number of renters that moved from a county other than Los Angeles, an area not in an identifiable county, or who moved to LA from living abroad. We have adjusted our SOLACHAN 2025 report to reflect this methodology.
- Rent is considered affordable if a household pays no more than 30% of their income towards rent and utilities.
- The race/ethnicity of a household is determined by how the head of household (the person whose name is first on the lease or mortgage) defines their own race/ethnicity. Therefore, this definition of race/ethnicity at the household level may not correctly identify all household members in interracial households.
- Income includes other streams outside of wages such as Social Security payments, pensions, child support, public assistance, annuities, money derived from rental properties, interest and dividends, etc.
- The “age of a household” is determined by the age of the head of household (the person whose name is first on the lease or mortgage).
