Congress is moving ahead on a new housing bill, so we take a look at where the housing shortage hits hardest.

From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams.

Last night, the Senate passed the 21st Century Road to Housing Act.

It's a bill aimed at making it easier to build housing and bring down the cost of both buying and renting.

The House is expected to pass it later this week and President Trump has said he supports it.

Housing has become a huge issue in recent years.

There isn't enough of it and what there is is unaffordable for a lot of people.

Nowhere more than at the low end of the market, as marketplaces Samantha Fields reports.

Home prices have jumped about 50% just in the last six years, and rents are up nearly 30% nationally.

Danielle Hale at Realtor.com says that's made it especially hard for people who are very low income to find a place to live.

That is the side of the market that has really dried up the most over the last decade.

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of apartments renting for less than $1,000 a month

dropped by about a third, according to a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for

housing studies. It's a function of a lack of supply pushing up rents generally and the fact

that building new has gotten so bloody expensive. Chris Herbert at the Joint Center says the cost

of land and construction is so high now that it doesn't make financial sense to build low-cost

housing.

People at the low end of the spectrum are making compromises any way they can,

but mostly what they're doing is spending more of their income on housing.

Most people who make less than $30,000 a year now spend more than half of what they make

on rent and utilities.

I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

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