Roommates Are Drowning: A Quarter Spend Most of Their Pay on Rent

Roommates Are Drowning: A Quarter Spend Most of Their Pay on Rent. A new survey of U.S. renters in roommate situations explains exactly how it happened: high housing costs are pushing them to give up their health, their savings, and even their relationships just to keep a roof over their heads, according to a SpareRoom survey whose findings were released on October 14, 2026.

Roommates used to be the budget-friendly option. For a growing number of American renters, it no longer feels like enough. The renters polled are already doing the thing financial advice columns recommend: splitting costs with roommates. It still is not covering the gap. The survey, conducted in September 2026 among 669 renters, found that 87% saw their rent rise in the past 12 months. More than half spend at least half of their take-home pay on rent, and 25% hand over 70% of it or more. Nearly three-quarters could not save any money at all in the past year, while 55% raided their savings to cover rent or bills. Almost two in five have stopped saving for retirement, and close to a third have given up on saving for a home down payment. Nearly half say they would prefer to live alone but simply cannot afford to.

Where renters live is changing too

High rent is redrawing maps as well as budgets. More than half of the renters surveyed moved in the past year because their rent became unaffordable. Roughly three in ten relocated to a less desirable neighborhood, and about one in seven moved farther from work. Nearly half say the quality of their housing has declined as a result of the pressure. Some are going further, carving bedrooms out of living rooms: Realtor.com has reported on renters giving up shared living space to make the numbers work, citing SpareRoom data that shared rentals without living rooms have nearly tripled over the past five years.

The personal toll goes beyond money

The costs reach past bank accounts. Roughly three in five say housing costs have affected their mental wellbeing in the past year. About a third have delayed medical care because of it, and nearly three in ten say housing costs have kept them from dating. "High housing costs deeply affect everyday life," said Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom. "When so much income is going toward keeping a roof over your head, there is less room for everything else: saving, planning, moving for a better opportunity or simply having the flexibility to deal with unexpected expenses."

Debt is filling the gap

More than three-quarters have turned to debt or other help to make rent in the past year. A third used a credit card to help pay rent, and a similar share borrowed from friends or family. More than a quarter took on a second job, and about one in four used an overdraft. Smaller shares turned to buy-now-pay-later plans, payday loans, or salary advances. The pattern fits a wider budget survival playbook young renters are already following.

Roommates save money — just not enough

There is a reason shared housing stays popular even as the numbers look grim. A Zillow rental analysis cited by BallerAlert found that combining households can unlock about twenty-one thousand dollars in yearly rent savings, while renters who live alone pay a so-called singles tax of roughly ten thousand dollars a year. Zillow rental expert Emily Smith put it plainly: "When you're living alone, you're covering the full rent on one income, and that can add up fast." It is the same math behind Roommates Are Drowning: A Quarter Spend Most of Their Pay on Rent — for someone on entry-level pay, a roommate can be the difference between treading water and going under, yet even that strategy is leaving millions stretched thin.

Money is not the whole story

Yet rent alone does not explain every choice young adults are making. Economist Geoffrey Sanzenbacher of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research found that the share of 25-to-34-year-olds living in a parent's home has risen 4.9 percentage points for women and 5.9 for men since 2007 — and that rents, jobs, and prices together explain only about half of that rise, according to reporting by Golden Cub Club. The rest sits alongside later marriage and later kids, and the researcher would not pin it on a single cause. The takeaway: cheaper rent would help, but it would not unwind every tradeoff.

What this means for renters

The survey's real warning is not about roommates themselves — sharing costs remains one of the smartest moves in an expensive market. It is that even the smart move is no longer enough to protect savings, health, or relationships. For renters, the practical lesson is to treat rent as the budget's anchor tenant: negotiate it, split it carefully, and have the money talk before the lease is signed, because the data shows the fallback is credit cards, overdrafts, and skipped checkups. That is the reality Roommates Are Drowning: A Quarter Spend Most of Their Pay on Rent describes — and for now, it is the reality millions of renters are living.