Just looked at some housing data and honestly it's wild how much rent has exploded. Back in 1970, the average rent in 1970 was sitting around $108 a month. Now we're looking at nearly $2,000 for a basic one-bedroom in most places. That's not even accounting for inflation properly.

What really got me thinking - half of all renters in the U.S. are spending more than 30% of their income just on housing. Over 12 million people are literally giving half their paycheck to landlords. Meanwhile, salaries haven't kept up at all. Someone making decent money in 1970 was probably doing way better proportionally than someone earning $59k today.

The wild part is how stable rent actually was back then. Like, the average rent in 1970 wasn't climbing crazy month to month. But then the 70s recession hit and suddenly there's this massive gap between what people earn and what housing costs. We're still dealing with the aftermath of that, plus the whole 2008 financial crisis made everything worse.

So yeah, if you're feeling squeezed on housing costs right now, you're not imagining it. The numbers back up what everyone's feeling.