More than one-third of the region’s one million rental households are “rent burdened,” paying more than 30% of their monthly income toward rent. For the first time in at least 10 years, a higher share of renters outside the City of Chicago was rent burdened (38%) than renters in Chicago (37%). Average rents increased 15.4% from 1991 to 1995, compared to an 11% rise in inflation. A high rent burden can indicate a lack of supply of rental housing, which reduces housing choice for renters and may hamper an employer’s ability to attract employees who earn modest wages.

The region had a net loss of more than 46,000 rental units between 1990 and 1998 even as the region added 312,000 jobs. A drastic reduction in units in Cook County, resulting in large part from condominium conversions and demolition of Chicago Housing Authority structures, accounted for the net loss, with all other counties adding rental units. By 1998, there were 3.9 jobs for every rental unit in the region.

The ratio of jobs to rental units provides a measure of housing availability for workers who cannot afford or do not want to buy a home. Estimating demand for new apartments based on this ratio, the region could require more than 300,000 new apartments for the estimated 1.2 million new jobholders projected by 2020. That scale of rental development would be much higher than in the 1990s, when only 21,000 new rental units were produced.

While this report presents regional trends, a comprehensive examination of influences like land cost, tax burden and geographic concentration of population by income would help yield a detailed understanding of the apparent imbalance between rental supply and job growth.

References