Baltimore County renters are facing one of the most severe housing affordability crises in Maryland, a Banner analysis of new census data found.
More than half of renting households in the county are considered cost burdened, meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on housing costs such as rent and utilities, the data shows. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has said cost-burdened households may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.
About one in four county renters spend at least 50% of their income on housing. They are considered severely cost burdened.
High housing costs are hardly unique to Baltimore County. Nationally, around 48% of renting households are cost burdened, as housing supply struggles to keep pace with demand, restrictive zoning hinders new construction, and inflation drives up costs.
Yet the county’s share of rent-burdened residents ranks among the highest in Maryland, on par with Baltimore City and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
The affordability crunch is the reason the county recorded the most eviction filings in the state during the most recent fiscal year, said attorney Matt Hill of the Public Justice Center, a nonprofit law group that represents low-income people.
“At least what I’ve seen in my clients, they’re getting these eviction filings often because they may be late on paying the rent,” Hill said. “Why are they late on paying the rent? Because they’re living so close to the edge.”
High housing costs also force renters to make difficult trade-offs in their day-to-day lives, said Roland Patterson Jr., president of Baltimore County’s NAACP branch.
“People are deciding between necessities,” Patterson said. “They’re deciding between rent, food, transportation — necessary expenses.”
The data, released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, was collected between 2020 and 2024.
The numbers show affordability challenges have deepened across multiple measures for Baltimore County renters. Compared to the 2015-19 survey period, renters’ housing costs increased 2% after adjusting for inflation, while their incomes declined 6%.
Over 70% of renting households in the eastside communities of Kingsville and Bowleys Quarters are cost burdened. In Randallstown, Lutherville and Reisterstown, more than six in 10 renters struggle to afford housing.
Middle-income earners under strain
The county’s poorest renters are the most likely to experience difficulty covering their housing costs, the data shows.
But even among those in the county who earn between $50,000 and $75,000, 60% are cost burdened.
“The fact that you’re now seeing more middle-income folks being cost burdened, it indicates that wages are not keeping up with the cost of housing prices,” said Taneeka Richardson, a policy analyst at the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. “At this rate, you pretty much need to be making six figures to afford to live comfortably.”
Emma Reid, of Cockeysville, thought her financial struggles would finally end when she graduated from law school last year. The 40-year-old pays $1,355 a month for a small one-bedroom apartment, which she shares with her 11-year-old son.
As a law clerk at a local firm, Reid makes a bit less than $50,000 a year. To cover rent, she borrows about $500 a month from her mother in California.
But her mother recently told her that can’t continue much longer.
“People think that, because I am an attorney, that I am going to have some money,” Reid said.
Reid has been applying for other positions since she passed the bar, but hasn’t found anything. Meanwhile, her grocery bills are rising, and she spends about $100 a month to do laundry at her complex.
Affordability crunch on the west side
Most census tracts with the highest shares of cost-burdened renters are concentrated on Baltimore County’s west side.
In one Randallstown tract, a typical renting household makes around $73,000 and most renters are working age. Yet with a median rent of nearly $2,600, 94% of those households are cost burdened and 10% are severely cost burdened.
Another tract in Catonsville has a high concentration of seniors. Around 56% reported spending half their income on rent.
The county has about a year left to comply with a consent agreement it reached with the NAACP and the federal government to build 1,000 new affordable housing units in a range of neighborhoods, though recent estimates show the need extends well beyond what the deal requires.
Hill said the council’s long-standing practice of deferring to their colleagues in land use and zoning matters has constrained the county’s ability to address its affordable housing shortage.
“The amount of discretion the individual County Council people have over whether a new affordable housing development goes forward in their jurisdiction is still very strong,” Hill said. “If a councilperson doesn’t want it in their jurisdiction, they still have effectively a pocket veto over that development.”
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