Map: Where are people struggling the most to pay rent?
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Financial experts say a good rule is to spend 25% to 30% of your income on housing. But in the city of Philadelphia alone, 88,000 Philadelphians are spending half or more of their paychecks on rent.
Housing is the biggest expense for those living paycheck to paycheck.
And data shows many people are struggling.
The map below shows the counties in our region where renting residents are paying more than half their incomes on housing.
Cumberland County, New Jersey, has the highest share of renters committing huge chunks of their income to that big fixed expense.
The nation's middle class has also increasingly become a class of renters, CBS News' Moneywatch reported.
A report from Harvard on the increasing share of higher- and middle-income Americans becoming renters said it was crucial to increase access to rental assistance, raise incomes of those at the bottom and expand the stock of available low-cost housing options available.
Meanwhile, homes are becoming more unaffordable for people trying to buy, a recent report shows.
Only 21% of the homes that went up for sale last year were considered affordable, the real estate company Redfin said in the report.
