GEOFF BENNETT: Now a look at rising rental prices and the struggle to find affordable housing.

Stephanie Sy has the story.

STEPHANIE SY: Rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of Americans, with half of all renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities.

That's according to a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies that examined 2022 census data.

We reached out to renters across the country to hear how these soaring prices are impacting their lives.

KATHLEEN HAUN, Georgia: My name is Kathleen Haun.

I am almost 46 years old.

I live outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

I am probably paying about two-thirds of my income, my monthly income, in rent.

DUANE PESICE, Arizona: My name is Duane Pesice.

I am 62 years old and I live in Tucson, Arizona.

My rent is about 75 percent of my income.

TEISHA FORD, Idaho: So, my name is Teisha Ford.

I live in Caldwell, Idaho.

I am 35, almost 36.

For percentage of my income on rent, I spend about roughly 42 percent between rent and utilities.

JADE GIELECKI, South Carolina: My name is Jade Gielecki.

I am 26 years old in Charleston, South Carolina.

I estimate that I spend about 60 percent of my monthly income on rent and utilities.

DENNIS LAYDEN, Florida: My name is Dennis Layden.

I'm 34, and I live in Panama City, Florida.

When your rent is taking up a third or more of your budget, the first thing that you have to get rid of is your entertainment budget.

You have to get rid of things that give us, I guess, relief.

KATHLEEN HAUN: In one year, I had a $300 price hike.

And then just this last year, it was a $700 price hike.

If it keeps going up, we're going to have to reevaluate a lot of things.

We're going to have to reevaluate family members being -- to have their own space.

DUANE PESICE: The only option that would be cheaper really is a trailer.

You can get a double-wide trailer for between $600 and $700, which is still more than half of my income, but it's less than 75 percent.

TEISHA FORD: In order to make up for the additional cost of rent, we do have to every once in a while go to food pantries to even subsidize our grocery budget, which is abysmal at this point.

DENNIS LAYDEN: At the end of the day, when you are paying that much you can really only afford food, your utilities, your living -- your rent, and then, obviously, gas and stuff like that.

And that's it.

JADE GIELECKI: I can't see myself going without having roommates.

In my current situation, I actually live with a couple who is no longer a couple anymore.

But we cannot afford to live elsewhere.

So we have three people in a two-bedroom, two of whom are no longer in a relationship, and sharing a room because of how hard it is to find housing.

DUANE PESICE: It's nerve-racking.

There's no real way to prepare for it, especially if you're going to be low.

And there are times when I have to think about, in the next couple days, do I need food for me or for the pets more?

TEISHA FORD: There are times when money is so tight that we will all go out as a family and do DoorDash together.

So it's embarrassing.

It's not fun, especially since I have a professional job and things like that.

I have an MBA.

And I'm out delivering DoorDash on the side.

And so my kids, they're aware of the financial pressures, but, at the same time, it's like, we take those opportunities to spend time together as a family.

KATHLEEN HAUN: I think I'm going to be renting my whole entire life, and that's -- it's really sad, because I make a good I make a good living.

I'm a middle-of-the-road American, and I should be able to buy a house.

JADE GIELECKI: It is a constant hamster wheel of working just to go to sleep at night somewhere, and it's hard.

STEPHANIE SY: And joining me now is Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, the lead author of a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies that has been tracking U.S. rental prices.

Whitney, thanks for joining the "NewsHour."

So those renters we just heard from, they're all described as cost burdened in housing market lingo.

That means they're paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent.

Your study found that, in 2022, 22.4 million Americans were in that boat.

Tell us more about what was behind that.

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies: That's correct.

We saw a record high number of cost burdened renters in 2022.

Part of this came from record high rent growth that came at the end of 2021 and early 2022.

And that was really from a surge in rental demand in a period where we just weren't building enough.

So, we weren't getting enough supply.

We were seeing a huge increase in the number of renter households.

That drove vacancy rates really low, and it really pushed rents up, and it made it much harder for people to afford their housing.

STEPHANIE SY: And I understand that this was something you saw across income levels, correct?

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: That's correct.

We saw a large increase in cost burdens from 2019 to 2022, an additional two million households and an increase of about 3 percentage points, pushing the total cost burden rate up to about 50 percent.

We saw this across every single income category we looked at, with especially large increases among middle-income renter households.

But even among the lowest income households who make less than $30,000, their cost burden rate increased by a percentage point-and-a-half to another record high of 83 percent.

STEPHANIE SY: We can all imagine what that might mean for someone already making low wages.

For how many Americans did that mean homelessness or sacrificing essentials?

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: Lower-income households who are severely cost burdened, meaning they spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities, are less likely to spend on things like food, health care, retirement.

So we see significant differences between those who are severely cost burdened and those who are not cost burdened.

So there's certainly tradeoffs that are involved when you live in unaffordable housing.

This year, we have also seen a record high number of people who are experiencing homelessness.

And so certainly this lack of affordable housing is pushing people into these situations where they just can't afford anything and they end up in shelters or they end up in places like in cars on the streets, where it's a more visible form of unsheltered homelessness.

STEPHANIE SY: How much of that in 2022 was sort of due to the pandemic and the burdens on families from that?

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: The rise in homelessness really came at a time when we saw pandemic relief measures ending and rents were also increasing at some of the fastest rates we have ever seen.

So it really put a lot of households in a bind.

STEPHANIE SY: Whitney, I do understand that, in the last year, rental prices have been slowing.

Does that mean things are getting better for renters now?

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: What we're seeing in some of the rent data is that there's a slowing of rent growth.

And, in some markets, there's actual declines in rents.

But what we saw during the pandemic were such significant increases.

So, in some quarters, rents were increasing by more than 20 percent year over year.

And so we're really in a situation where things are much less affordable than they were pre-pandemic.

We are seeing some of that market cooling, some deceleration of rent growth.

But in most places, rents are in fact still growing.

STEPHANIE SY: When you talk about supply, the supply of low-rent units, according to your report, has precipitously declined in the last decade.

So, those renters, I assume, will continue to feel the squeeze.

What are effective ways to address that problem and rent affordability overall?

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: We're really going to need every tool that we have in the toolbox.

And so a lot of policy momentum right now is just around increasing supply, with the idea that a lot of supply at the higher end will filter down and provide rent relief further down the market.

And so we're seeing a lot of zoning reform across the country.

What we're really going to need, though, are increased subsidies, so things like public housing or housing choice vouchers, and a much broader commitment from our federal, state and local levels toward really addressing the affordability crisis, both toward increasing affordable options and toward really addressing this problem of rising homelessness that we're also seeing.

STEPHANIE SY: Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, with Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, thank you so much.

WHITNEY AIRGOOD-OBRYCKI: Thank you.