Most households that rent in the Bay Area were considered “cost-burdened” last year, but the rate is even higher in the outer, less expensive parts of the region.
About 56% of the Bay Area’s renter households paid at least 30% of their pre-tax income toward housing costs in 2024, estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show. Housing officials and researchers often use that threshold to help identify families whose housing costs are so high that they may struggle to pay for other necessities.
The situation is particularly stark in some North Bay and East Bay cities at the periphery of the Bay Area — places that have become refuges of the working class as the rest of the region has become too expensive. Roughly two in three renter households in Vallejo, Vacaville and Concord are cost-burdened, the highest shares among the Bay Area cities with at least 10,000 rental homes for which the Census had data. Compare that to the 40% of renter households in San Francisco that were cost-burdened…