NEW YORK CITY—According to a new study by NYU and Capital One on rent affordability trends from 2000 to 2012, the rent really is too damn high. More than one million households in New York City are “rent-burdened”—meaning they are paying 30% or more of household income on rent, and nearly 600,000 of those households are severely rent-burdened, or paying more than 50% of their income on rent—according to the newly released “NYU Furman Center/Capital One Affordable Rental Housing Landscape.”

Since 2000, the percentage of renters paying large shares of their income on rents has grown. While median rent in New York City rose by 11% from 2005 to 2012, median household income of renters rose only 2%. By 2012, a majority of renter households were rent-burdened, and nearly a third of them were severely rent-burdened.

“The lack of affordable housing is a complex issue that is driven by multiple factors, including stagnant incomes, increasing demand for rental housing, and slow growth in the supply of affordable rental housing,” says Max Weselcouch, director of the NYU Furman Center's Moelis Institute for Affordable Housing Policy.