New York

A POPULAR narrative of the US housing market has been that big city prices are locking out young buyers, feeding a cycle in which a growing number of people are forced to rent at ever higher rates as demand overwhelms supply. Throw in the fact that wages haven't kept pace, and you have a world where a wide swathe of Americans can't save enough to ever buy that first home.

The reality may be a bit more complicated. It's true that, when combined with a lack of government support for affordable housing, this situation has pushed the number of cash-poor renters to a new high. Some 26 per cent of US renters paid at least half their income to landlords in 2014, up from 20 per cent in 2001, according to the State of the Nation's Housing report, published on Wednesday by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).