CARROLLTON, TX—In a July 31 earnings call, Camden Property Trust CEO Rick Campo was asked directly about the risk of rising rents pushing apartment renters out the door.

His tongue-in-cheek response: Camden renters "have the ability to pay higher rents and we want to give them that opportunity."

Campo's answer was a succinct rebuttal to the widely accepted narrative of runaway rents pushing renters to the ceiling of affordability. There's abundant evidence that market-rate apartments, on the whole, are nowhere near an affordability crisis. And these misdirected fears are distracting attention from a distinctly separate and far more worrisome problem—the nation's severe shortage of designated affordable housing units.