The 234 Apartment

As rents climb across the U.S., more people are being driven into homelessness. In some of the country’s hottest housing markets , rent increases have a strong connection with upticks in the homeless population , according to a study released this week from real- estate website Zillow . In New York City, a 5% rent hike would lead to nearly 3,000 more people becoming homeless. In Los Angeles, the same increase in rent would leave around 2,000 people without a place to live. To produce the report, Zillow created a model that analyzed different variables, including how population growth and changes in rent affect the homelessness rate. The model also considered the accuracy of homeless counts. Zillow then passed Census population figures , homelessness counts and its own rental data through the model to determine the relationship between rental prices and homelessness in different cities. The Census population numbers also take into account people who move in or out of a city, inclu...

Hunting for a new apartment to rent can lose its excitement very quickly, but in some cities the search gets much worse, much faster. If you’ve ever been on the lookout for a new home in Philadelphia, you may have experienced the worst of renting, according to a new study. A recent report from financial website WalletHub cultivated a list of the 150 best and worst cities to live in, and while smaller cities in states such as Arizona, Nebraska, and South Dakota topped the rankings, big cities like Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, and, yes, Philadelphia, were staggered at the bottom of the rankings, with Philadelphia falling at No. 128 in the 150-city survey. Rankings were defined in a couple ways: rental market and affordability (weighing factors such as rent-to-price ratio, security deposits, cost of living, historical rental price changes, and others) and overall quality of life (weighing factors such as job market, driver friendliness, and the weather). Considering the weight on ...