A record number of U.S. renters are cost burdened, paying 30 percent or more of their monthly income towards their housing costs. High housing costs prompt low-income families to make widespread cutbacks on other critical household essentials, such as food, education, and transportation. However, high rental costs also have another effect on families that is less well-documented—they make it more difficult to find a new home. When affordable housing options are few and far between, how do low-income renters relocate?

In a new paper published in the American Sociological Review, I address this question using interviews that I conducted with 69 low-income non-Hispanic white and Latina/o renters living in Los Angeles (LA). Like other high-cost cities, LA is an extremely challenging housing market for low-income families. When I began this study in 2019, LA’s median rental price for recent movers was nearly $2,200 per month. LA landlords often require tenants to earn at least three times the monthly rent, excellent credit, and up to two months’ rent as a deposit.

Many of these requirements are out of reach for low-income movers. Instead, they turn to trusted sources of support to help them during moves: their friends, family members, and coworkers. I found that low-income white and Latina/o renters alike leaned heavily on their social ties to help them lease up. Friends and family members provided information about open apartments and cosigned leases with renters with low credit scores. Renters’ social ties also gifted or loaned money or hosted movers temporarily while they bolstered their savings. For instance, Maggie, a low-income white renter, told me that her mother cosigned her lease. “If I didn’t have that,” she reflected, “I don’t know how I would have found a place.” Meanwhile, Maite, a low-income Mexican renter, borrowed money from her mother to cover the cost of the required $2,600 security deposit.

Although renters across race/ethnicity leaned on their social ties for help during moves, I found that low-income white and low-income Latina/o renters had access to different typesof resources through their social networks. These network resource differences ultimately influenced renters’ housing search outcomes.

Consider Clara, a low-income Honduran renter who was evicted by a boarding house owner after  she learned that she was pregnant. Due to her low credit score, Clara and her husband struggled to find an apartment. Her husband learned that his coworker’s brother lived in a building nearby. This workplace social tie vouched for Clara and her husband to the building manager, who allowed them to move into a studio apartment. However, the unit was in extreme disrepair. Here, Clara recalls the moment when she stepped into her new apartment for the first time:

There was an old bed, just thrown on the ground…there must have been 2,000 cigarette butts, just everywhere. There were cockroaches, there were rats, the toilet was broken, everything was green…When he opened the door and I saw, Oh my God! I felt like my world was falling apart.

Clara felt that she had no other choice but to accept the unit, in spite of its conditions. To cover the entry costs, Clara turned to another workplace social tie—her supervisor at her job as a factory line worker—who loaned her the money she needed for the deposit.

Low-income white renters had access to relatively affluent friends and family compared with low-income Latina/o renters. These connections helped them enter homes that aligned more closely with their family’s needs and preferences. For example, during Jennifer’s last move, she moved temporarily into her parents’ single-family home for several months. Her parents did not expect her to pay rent, and this support allowed her to save quickly and to be more discerning during her search. As she recalled:

We had saved up a decent amount of money…We probably looked at five to ten apartments in the area. I’d call the ads, leave a message, make an appointment, go view the place. Then, it would be like, “Thanks, don’t like it.” They’d have issues or something I didn’t like about the complex. Some of them didn’t have gated parking or amenities that I was looking for.

Jennifer’s family’s support helped her enter her first-choice apartment. Other low-income white renters told me that their ties had given them financial gifts (as opposed to loans) or cosigned their leases, like Maggie’s mother (introduced above). In contrast, most Latina/o respondents’ social ties also struggled to make ends meet, placing critical limits on the type of assistance that they could offer to their loved ones.

This support made all the difference for movers’ housing outcomes. Thanks to the help of financially secure friends and family, low-income white renters mostly avoided badly maintained apartments or crowded homes. Support from social ties also shaped how movers’ experienced the housing search process itself. For instance, Clara’s housing search was prolonged and stressful, and her move left her owing a substantial amount of money to her boss. In contrast, Jennifer’s move was relatively seamless, and living with her family without paying rent allowed her to avoid debt. “It was pretty much wham, bam, it was so perfect,” she told me, jokingly.

In a landlords’ market with few vacancies, landlords can prioritize potential tenants with high incomes, substantial savings, and excellent credit. To meet these criteria, low-income renters often turn to their social ties for assistance. However, the resources that their social ties can provide make all the difference in renters’ housing outcomes. Given the persistence of racial inequalities in social network resources, this ultimately widens inequalities between moving families.

Several policy tools may help stem the harms of unaffordable housing markets on low-income families. First, policymakers should consider limiting the use of credit and background checks. Credit checks are a relatively recent tenant screening tool that often do not capture the difficult budgeting decisions families make to pay their rent. For instance, many respondents that I spoke to carried large credit balances precisely so they could have the cash on-hand to make their rent. Second, policymakers should also consider limiting security deposits, which force movers to take on financial debt, or passing legislation that allows renters to pay deposits over an extended period. As long as landlords’ screening practices prioritize renters with financially secure social ties, rental housing searches will continue to widen inequalities among moving families.

Steven Schmidt is an NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern California and an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston University. He can be reached at steven.schmidt@usc.edu or on Bluesky at @stevenschmidt.bsky.social.