Jessica Bliss, and Mike Reicher

The Tennessean

Rachel Layton's rental is tiny and a bit run down, with no central air and closets so small that her roommate also has a standing wardrobe just to fit her clothes.

Layton pays $990 a month in rent for her 920-square-foot place in Sylvan Park, and in the hot Nashville market, she knows that's a steal. She had to sign a 14-month lease on the two-bedroom, 1.5-bath spot just to get her landlord to keep the price that low.

And even that cost seems steep.

With her student loans and monthly bills on a single income, 27-year-old Layton has reached the threshold of what she can afford in rent. She can't seem to save anything to buy a house. And even if she could afford it, she wouldn't want to buy right now, with the housing market prices being so gorged.

"I would really love to have a house of my own, but it's not feasible and that’s sad," she says. "I'm a marketing director with an MBA. I thought I was doing everything right."

More renters in Nashville are struggling to afford housing, while homeowners are paying increasingly less. This growing affordability gap, seen in markets around the nation, stems from forces unleashed during the housing crash a decade ago.

In a data analysis using census figures and foreclosure data, the Associated Press examined the state of housing in the United States. It found "a sharp economic divide between the fortunes of renters and homeowners in many communities."

"This divide shows a fraying in the long-established pattern of renters eventually becoming homebuyers — often because higher costs leave renters unable to save for a down payment," it reported.

The data shows the proportion of rental households in nearly all 353 metro regions in the United States has increased in the past decade. In many communities, it shows "renters have become older and more financially stressed."

In the greater Nashville area, the share of financially stressed renters — those spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs — climbed from 2009 through 2014. It gained three percentage points to reach 47 percent. But during the same period, the share of stressed owners declined slightly to just less than 25 percent.

While rents increase, many homeowners are saving by refinancing at historically low interest rates. In Nashville renters' median housing costs climbed by 4 percent from 2009 through 2014, while median costs for homeowners dropped by 6.5 percent.

Still, Nashville’s rents are relatively affordable compared to other metro areas with more than 500,000 households. Among the nation’s 40 largest areas, 28 have a higher share of financially stressed renters.

But affordability seems like a relative term to many Nashville renters.

When 30-year-old Ben Mattox moved here six years ago, the construction worker rented an apartment out by the airport with a friend for $675 a month. Being farther from the city seemed to be more affordable, and, in many cases, it is. But he still can't afford to live alone.

And "being in the city limits, that's not something that’s feasible," he says. "It seems like minimum $1,000 to get in the door."

So, more than half a decade after moving here, he's splitting $1,100 rent for an apartment down I-40 east off Old Hickory, on bad days battling a 30-minute commute into the city. His target is to buy a home in the next few years. He knows he won't be able to afford anything move-in ready, but he hopes with his construction skills he can find an affordable fixer-upper.

The homeowner rate in the greater Nashville area in 2014 sat at 65.9 percent, a 2.9 percentage point drop since 2009.

In its analysis, the Associated Press devised five community types — Growing Gap, Dashed Dreams, Stable, PaRent and Yuppies — to label common housing trends over the past decade.

The Nashville area was deemed a "PaRent" community where "people reaching middle age — typically those with families who have historically been more likely to own homes — are staying in rentals."

This analysis label included places where "rental household size was growing, where adults aged 35-54 were increasingly renting and where the share of single-family house rental stock was rising." In many of these cases, the analysis said, "it's because they can't afford a house or have faced a financial setback and have returned to renting."

Brittany and Justin McCollum are two Nashville residents who have returned to renting.

Just married and tired of "throwing money away each month" they did what many people hope to, they bought a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a yard in Bellevue. For three years, the couple worked to make the house a home. They bought all new furniture and settled in.

But two things happened: First, they realized that the only space they really used in their 1,700-square-foot home was the living room and the bedroom. The rest was wasted.

And, second, they watched their home value go up and up and up.

Finally, they did some math and stuck a "for sale" sign in their yard. The house sold for a $50,000 profit — enough money to pay off their credit card debt, their student loans and their cars. They just couldn't pass it up.

"We could pay our debt for the next 20 years," 33-year-old Justin McCollum said, "or pay it off early in life and do what we want."

The couple sold nearly everything they bought to fill the big house — everything but their beds, clothes, TV and little Yorkshire Terrier named Rocky.

Now, the couple and their pup live in a 600-square-foot studio apartment in Rolling Mill Hill. They pay $1,650 a month in rent — essentially what they paid in their home mortgage — but they love living in the city and embrace their small space. It seems huge compared to their alternate plan, which was to sell their house and live in an RV.

They still may do that someday.

To save on rent.

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.