‘A slap in the face’: Philly metro named among the country’s ‘least affordable’ for renters

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New York and Boston are still among the least affordable places to rent an apartment on the East Coast. But new research shows Philadelphia, the most impoverished big city in the country, has gained ground.

The median monthly rent for a typical apartment in the Philly metro was $1,865 during the final quarter of 2024, according to a January report from real estate brokerage Redfin. To afford that, researchers found someone would need to earn $74,600 a year — $15,630 more than the median income for the area.

The gap at the national level is closer to $10,000.

“People are putting more of their money into rent and they don’t have money left over for things like personal savings, or retirement, or other things that could make their lives better,” said chief economist Daryl Fairweather.

In Philadelphia, the trend has made Theresa Howell’s housing search feel like a Herculean task amid an affordable housing crisis.

For more than a decade, Howell has rented a two-bedroom rowhouse in Frankford. But she’s concerned about the level of lead exposure in the home and is determined to move out, fearing for her health and the health of her great nieces and nephews who live with her.

The problem is that she can’t find a place in her budget. Every place she’s looked at over the last year is priced well above the $1,000 she’s paying now. In many cases, the landlord is asking for nearly double.

Howell, who is disabled and lives on a fixed income, simply can’t afford it. She fears she’ll have to leave her hometown to keep a roof over her head.

“It’s almost as if they’re saying to low-income people, ‘you’re no longer wanted in the city of Philadelphia,” said Howell, a member of OnePA, a statewide social justice organization.

“It’s a slap in the face,” she added.

Philadelphia has a long history of being more affordable than other big cities. But like many places, rents in the city have been on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic. And prices have remained elevated amid strong demand for apartment living, a trend partially informed by the city’s tight housing market, which has sidelined many first-time homebuyers who continue to contend with overvalued properties and high mortgage rates.

An injection of transplants from pricier cities like New York over the last few years has also put pressure on rental prices, Fairweather said.

Kadeem Morris, co-managing attorney of the housing unit at Community Legal Services, expects rental rates to remain high, causing more Philadelphians to be cost-burdened. The term refers to someone whose housing costs account for more than 30% of their monthly income.

“The average Philadelphian is having a harder time affording housing, and they are now, more consistently, going to be interacting with the eviction system, whether that’s through the diversion program, or through actual municipal court experiences, or in need of consistent access to rental assistance on an ongoing basis because they just can’t afford to make rent,” said Morris.

At the moment, incomes nationwide are rising faster than rental prices. But Fairweather doesn’t expect that trend to continue.

The country’s housing deficit, which includes at least 80,000 units in the Philadelphia metro, is a big reason why. The tariffs the Trump administration rolled out last week are also expected to compound that ongoing issue by making critical building materials more expensive.

The end of a national building boom is yet another factor. The resulting glut of apartments helped stabilize rents as property owners offered incentives to lease out their buildings, including lower rents.

“There are some significant barriers in place,” Fairweather said.