A Tale of Two Neighborhoods: Philadelphia's Rental Crisis
By Benjamin Oller, Principal at TCS Property Management · About the author
Philadelphia has long worn the badge of a “city of homeowners.” But that identity is fading fast. New analysis from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that renters now make up nearly half of the city’s households — about 48% between 2018 and 2022 — and their ranks grew 11% over the previous decade.
Here's the troubling part: nearly half of those renters (48.5%) are cost-burdened, meaning they spend 30% or more of their income on rent and utilities. That's the threshold housing experts use to flag when housing costs start crowding out food, healthcare, transportation, and savings.
Where the burden falls hardest
Pew’s neighborhood-level analysis found the highest concentrations of cost-burdened renters in North, West, and Northeast Philadelphia, while Center City and parts of the Northwest fared better. Citywide, the share of cost-burdened renters actually declined slightly between the 2013–17 and 2018–22 periods — but pockets along the city’s edges moved sharply in the wrong direction.
Two neighborhoods tell the story in opposite directions.
Bustleton: rising burden in a “suburban” corner of the city
Bustleton, in Northeast Philadelphia (ZIP 19115), doesn't look like a neighborhood in housing distress. It has a suburban feel, two-story duplexes instead of classic Philly row homes, and a median household income of $67,050 — well above the citywide median of $57,537.
Yet the share of cost-burdened renters there jumped from 43% to 58% over the study period, and severely cost-burdened renters — those spending at least half their income on housing — climbed from 24% to 32%.
The explanation is a stark income gap. While Bustleton homeowners earn a median of roughly $100,000, the neighborhood’s renters earn just $41,783 — slightly below the citywide renter median. In a neighborhood where renters make up only 37% of households, they’re an economically distinct — and squeezed — population.
East Germantown: a rare bright spot
East Germantown (ZIP 19138), one of the city’s oldest residential areas, moved the other way. Cost-burdened renters fell from 61% to 52%, and severe cost burden dropped from 39% to 26%.
What changed? Renters’ median incomes grew 16% when inflation-adjusted rents held flat. Local housing advocates and analysts also point to supply: when rental availability keeps pace with demand, prices stabilize. Kevin Moran of the Urban Land Institute’s Philadelphia District Council argues that higher-density housing is key to keeping affordability trends moving in this direction.
Even so, more than half of East Germantown’s renters remain cost-burdened — improvement, not resolution.
The policy gap
Philadelphia has tools on the books, like the mixed-income housing zoning bonus, which lets developers build taller and denser in exchange for setting aside 10% of units for low- and moderate-income residents. But there’s a catch buried in the math.
Eligibility for these programs is pegged to HUD’s area median income (AMI) — calculated across an 11-county metro region where Philadelphia has the lowest median income. The result, as the Women’s Community Revitalization Project’s Nora Latcha notes, is that “affordable” units priced to AMI standards can still be out of reach for the roughly one-quarter of Philadelphia renters earning $30,000 or less.
The takeaway
Both neighborhoods actually have median rents below the citywide figure of $1,250 — yet both have more cost-burdened renters than the city overall. That's the core lesson of Pew’s analysis: affordability isn't just about rent levels. It's about the relationship between what renters earn, what housing costs, and how much real rental supply exists.
For policymakers, that suggests a two-front strategy: build more rental housing to keep prices in check, and recalibrate affordability standards so subsidized units actually reach the lowest-income renters — not just those who clear a regional income bar set by wealthier suburbs.
Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts, “Renters Are Disproportionately Cost-Burdened in Philadelphia’s Bustleton, East Germantown Areas” (October 2024), based on U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates.