The Renter Wealth Index is a place-based measure of renter financial precarity across U.S. zip codes and counties, built to help policymakers, practitioners, and investors identify where programs supporting renter wealth-building can most meaningfully expand access to economic mobility.
The Opportunity
Rent has outpaced income growth in most U.S. markets over the past decade.1 For the roughly 44 million renter households in the United States,2 that gap compounds into something more serious: limited ability to save, invest, or absorb financial shocks. The median homeowner holds more than 40 times the net worth of the median renter,3 a disparity that has widened meaningfully since the late 1980s and will continue to widen without new pathways for renter wealth-building.
The Lafayette Square Institute data team created the Renter Wealth Index to make renter financial precarity measurable and place-specific. By combining seven indicators drawn from national data sources into a single place-based score, the index helps policymakers, practitioners, and investors identify where programs supporting renter wealth-building could most significantly expand access to economic mobility, and direct pilots, capital, and policy interventions accordingly.
Facts and Takeaways
Renters comprise roughly one-third of all U.S. households4 yet hold a small fraction of the accumulated wealth of homeowners.5 Nearly half of all renter households, 22.6 million Americans, are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of income on housing and utilities.6 Nationally, renters now need roughly $80,949 in annual income to afford the typical rental unit, up from about $60,000 in 2020.7
Over the past five years, apartment rents increased 28.7% and single-family home rents increased 42.9%, while median household income grew just 22.5%.8 After paying for housing, a majority of working-age renters lack sufficient income to cover basic necessities.9
The wealth gap is structural. Roughly half of renters hold any appreciating assets, compared to roughly three-quarters of homeowners.10 Nearly two-thirds of renters expect they will never become homeowners.11 For many Americans, the traditional pathway to wealth-building through homeownership feels permanently out of reach.
The Renter Wealth Index is a core component of Lafayette Square Institute's work to expand pathways to wealth-building for renters nationwide. By quantifying renter financial precarity down to the ZIP code level and connecting place-based need to actionable strategy, the index gives practitioners, policymakers, and investors a shared data foundation for targeting renter wealth solutions where they can prove both feasible in capital markets and consequential for households.
Building the Investment Policy Agenda
Lafayette Square Institute has launched the National Renter Wealth Coalition (NRWC) to convene economic mobility, housing finance, and policy experts to identify, operationalize, and scale solutions that expand wealth-building pathways for renters across the United States. The Renter Wealth Index supports that work by connecting place-based needs to actionable strategy, pinpointing the geographies where renter wealth models can deliver meaningful benefits through pilots, capital deployment, and policy innovation.
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