Why a boom in apartment building may not help with the rising cost of housing in Chattanooga

Staff photo by Matt Hamilton/ Apartments are seen under construction on Riverside Drive on Friday.

Back in 2019, Caleb McCool, a lifelong resident of the Chattanooga area, rented a one-bedroom apartment in Red Bank for $650 a month, a rate he found affordable at his income.
Two years later, an out-of-state developer upped McCool's monthly rent to $1,000.
"It was bought out by somebody out West," said McCool, 25, in a phone interview. "They didn't even remodel it."

McCool's experience is far from unique. In 2022, Hamilton County saw the largest annual rent increase in the past decade, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.
Within Chattanooga, the annual median rent increased from $855 in 2010 to $1,300 in 2022, a 52% increase.
Chattanooga's rent problem is part of a national trend. According to a recent report from Harvard University, 22.4 million households spend more than 30% of their income on rent and 12.1 million spend more than 50%, The New York Times reported.

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