KRYSTAL GUERRA’S Miami apartment has a tiny kitchen, cracked tiles, warped cabinets, no dishwasher and hardly any storage space. But Guerra was fine with the apartment’s shortcomings. It was all part of being a 32-year-old graduate student in South Florida, she reasoned, and she was happy to live there for a few more years as she finished her marketing degree. That was until a new owner bought the property and told her he was raising the rent from US$1,550 to US$1,950, a 26 percent increase that Guerra said meant her rent would account for the majority of her take-home pay from the University of Miami. “I thought that was insane,” said Guerra, who decided to move out. “Am I supposed to stop paying for everything else I have going on in my life just so I can pay rent? That’s unsustainable.” Guerra is hardly alone. Rents have exploded across the United States, causing many to dig deep into their savings, downsize to subpar units or fall behind on payments and risk eviction now that a federal moratorium has ended. In the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, median rent rose an astounding 19.3 percent from December 2020 to December 2021, according to a Realtor.com analysis of properties with two or fewer bedrooms. Nowhere was the jump bigger than in the Miami metro area, where the median rent exploded to US$2,850, 49.8 percent higher than the previous year. Other cities across Florida — Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville — and the Sun Belt destinations of San Diego, Las Vegas, Austin, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee, all saw spikes of more than 25 percent during that time period. Rising rents are an increasing driver of high inflation that has become one of the top economic problems in the United States. U.S. Labor Department data, which cover existing rents as well as new listings, show much smaller increases, but these are also picking up. Rental costs rose 0.5 percent in January from December, the Labor Department said last week. That may seem small, but it was the biggest increase in 20 years, and will likely accelerate. Economists worry about the impact of rent increases on inflation because the big jumps in new leases feed into the U.S. consumer price index, which is used to measure inflation. Inflation jumped 7.5 percent in January from a year earlier, the biggest increase in four decades. While many economists expect that to decrease as pandemic-disrupted supply chains unravel, rising rents could keep inflation high through the end of the year since housing costs make up one-third of the consumer price index. Things have gotten so bad in Boston, which has nearly overtaken San Francisco as the second-most expensive rental market in the United States, that one resident went viral for jokingly putting an igloo on the market for US$2,700 a month. “Heat/ hot water not included,” Jonathan Berk tweeted. Experts say many factors are responsible for astronomical rents, including a nationwide housing shortage, extremely low rental vacancies and unrelenting demand as young adults continue to enter the crowded market. (SD-Agencies) | 