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The first apartment units in the 10 WestEdge mixed-used building at Spring Street and Lockwood Drive are being leased. Charleston has added hundreds of new apartments recently, but rents remain high. Brad Nettles/Staff

Discussions of Charleston’s housing crisis tend to focus on the plight of homeowners being priced out of desirable neighborhoods or would-be buyers who can’t make the math work on a modest house anywhere in the region, much less near jobs, restaurants and other amenities.

Those trends have real and problematic impacts on more than just the households being directly affected. And certainly, home prices have increased much more quickly than the average wage in most parts of the Charleston area.

A look at several cost-of-living indicators by Post and Courier reporter David Slade suggests, however, that homes in the Charleston region are slightly more affordable than in some similar metro areas around the country.

That’s scant cause for a sigh of relief considering how widespread housing problems have become. But the same data point to a different concern that sometimes gets overlooked in the broader housing affordability crisis — renters are increasingly being squeezed.

The nonprofit Council for Community and Economic Research pegs the average rent at $1,339 per month in Charleston, for example, compared to $1,087 nationwide. Other estimates put the number slightly lower, but still above cities of similar size.

The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis ranks the region’s rents among the top 25% for metro areas in the country.

About half of Charleston renters spend more than the recommended cap of 30% of their monthly income on rent, according to recent data from a Harvard University study. More than 17% of renters in Charleston County spend at least half of their monthly income on housing.

Not coincidentally, North Charleston has among the nation’s highest rate of evictions.

These are problems on a personal level for the people who struggle to keep roofs over their heads. The stress of unaffordable housing can cause health problems and strain relationships. Some people end up homeless.

But these are also problems for every other resident of the Charleston area. When renters, like home buyers, are forced to the edges of the region in search of affordability, it exacerbates traffic congestion and parking concerns.

Addressing those issues ultimately creates a tax burden and other, more intangible costs that might not be so significant if more people could afford to live closer to where they work, shop, go to school and otherwise live their lives.

And spending so much money on rent makes it incredibly challenging to save up to buy a home, which remains an important way for households to build wealth over the long-term.

Incidentally, there are a number of homes in the tri-county area that would be cheaper on a monthly basis to buy than the average cost to rent an apartment. Connecting people interested in making the switch to ownership with programs that can help them through that process ought to be a priority.

The number of available market-rate rentals in the Charleston area has increased dramatically over the past few years, leading some experts to predict that prices might finally start to drop. That doesn’t seem to be happening quite yet.

Efforts to build more affordable housing are also proceeding, including several projects funded in part by $20 million that Charleston voters approved for that purpose in 2017. And the city’s workforce housing provisions can help people earning up to 80% of the area median income access cheaper apartments.

Addressing unaffordable rents in the long-term will require some of the same strategies for homeowners — taking a look at land-use rules that drive up costs, investing in mass transit to provide commuter options, allowing modest density in appropriate places.

These are not quick or simple fixes, but they will be important for keeping a high quality of life as the Charleston area grows — for homeowners and renters alike.

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