The American poor and working class have never been well-housed, but the 2008 financial crisis made a bad problem worse. It dramatically expanded the population of people seriously burdened by the need for shelter. The crash was rooted in the housing market, and the ensuing tidal wave of fore­closures resulted in a drop in the homeownership rate of 6 percentage points.

Most of those people joined the now 43 million households on the rental market, nearly half of whom spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing. The post-crash growth in demand has helped drive up rents across the country.

Over the last year, the growth in rental households has stopped or even reversed — but rent prices are still increasing. And the number of burdened renters remains substantially above its pre-crisis level. Meanwhile, some people who would have been homeowners in decades past now appear leery or incapable of home buying.