Record Number of Households Pay More than Half of Income on Rent The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University recently released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report. The latest report reveals that 11.4 million households paid more than half their incomes for housing in 2014. This is the first time the United States has seen so many residents paying such a large portion of their income on rent. The number of cost-burdened renters, who pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, reached 21.3 million.