The unholy triad of housing (un)affordability

One of the distressing trends I have been keeping track of for the last several years is the “rental affordability crisis.”  This is the moniker put on the trend by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the fact that rents have been rising far faster than income among the lower quartiles, causing the median rent as a percent of income to rise to a series of new record highs, most recently in the second quarter of this year.