A growing number of renters in the U.S. are struggling to pay for housing each month, according to new research that found more middle-income families may be defaulting on rent and becoming vulnerable to eviction.
While the country's lowest-income renters have always paid an outsized share of their earnings toward housing costs, a new report from the Urban Institute found that families across all income brackets are facing increasingly stark affordability issues.
One in every five middle-income renters surveyed by the institute said that at some point during 2025, they could not afford to pay the full amount of rent when it was due. That's a significant jump from the year prior, when about 14% reported being unable to pay their rent.
Researchers said housing affordability is being made worse due to mounting economic pressures and the rising costs of everyday necessities. A similar number of renters — slightly more than 20% — also reported struggling to pay for gas, oil or electricity last year.
"We have historically observed that low-income renters experience high rates of housing cost-burdens and, as a result, are particularly vulnerable to having to make choices between meeting their family's basic needs or paying rent. And sometimes that results in eviction or homelessness," said Samantha Batko, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and co-author of the report. "This increase among middle-income renters is a big and important shift that reflects overall challenges with affordability in the country."
The trend is specific to renters, the research showed.
Homeowners' ability to afford their mortgage payments has remained steady for the past seven years, the survey found. But the number of renters who reported being behind on rent has been climbing since 2022.
Nearly 28% of lower-income renters said they were unable to pay for housing sometime during 2025, a gradual increase from around 24% in 2019.
But middle-income renters — defined by the research group as adults making between $31,300 and $62,600 for a single-person household or between $53,300 and $106,600 for a family of three — experienced the sharpest increase in financial hardship.
Nearly 22% of these renters reported being unable to pay the full amount of rent when it was due at least once in 2025 because they could not afford to do so.
Even households in the highest income bracket tracked by the researchers reported an uptick in issues paying rent. Around 7% of high-earning renters failed to pay for their housing at least once last year, an increase of 2% from the year prior.
"We are seeing a larger segment of the overall population that are faced with these daily and monthly choices," Batko said. "When we see a family reporting having had a late payment or a partial payment or a missing rent payment, we're seeing those choices happen in real time. That is a family that is choosing to pay for a child's medication or for food for lunch or dinner and choosing to forgo, or being forced to forgo, a rental payment."
The research shared by the Urban Institute this week is part of its ongoing analysis of responses to its annual Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, which tracks how families are spending money and where they are struggling to make ends meet. More than 10,000 adults participate in the Institute's survey.
While housing affordability issues are spread across all regions of the country, researchers said, the starkest uptick in rent defaults last year was in the South and Northeast.
Eviction laws vary by state, but Batko worries that defaulting on even a single rent payment in some states can mean losing one's housing.
"The expansion to middle-income households, with significantly more households reporting challenges paying rent … that definitely raises concerns for me that there are potential implications for inflow to homelessness," Batko said.
Eviction rates in the U.S. have remained relatively steady over the past few years, according to data from the Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions around the U.S.
Still, Batko said, with the cost of living only getting higher for most American families, it seems likely that the trend lines of U.S. households being unable to pay rent will only continue to rise. Meanwhile, getting housing assistance may become more difficult.
The Trump administration has published a proposed rule that would allow the administrators of federal housing-assistance programs to establish restrictions on aid, including time limits and work requirements. Housing advocates have said this could limit the number of people who can access federal aid programs, including rental subsidies.
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