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The mortgage crisis that devastated the economy has received endless attention, but it's not just homeowners who have suffered badly in this economy.

As of 2012, renters made up 35 percent of American households. Their numbers are growing, reversing a decades-long uptick in home ownership.

And in the last 50 years, the percentage of income they're spending on the rent has increased dramatically. A quarter of renters are spending more than half their income on rent.

Ymelda Alvarez, her husband and their two daughters live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment just east of downtown Los Angeles in a neighborhood called Boyle Heights. It's not a fancy or trendy area; it's a poor part of town with a lot of crime and most of the schools are struggling.

Their apartment consists of a front living room converted to a bedroom, a small kitchen and a little room in the back with bunk beds for the kids. Other amenities include sagging ceilings, leaky faucets, doors that don't lock and pests like cockroaches and rats.

For this they pay $1,000 a month.

But it's currently their only option. Antonio, her husband, can't land a full-time job and only makes about $1,200 month from stringing together part-time work at a school nearby.

Code Switch

8 Reasons Why The Rent Is Too Damn High

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 300 armed American forces are being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as President Barack Obama nears a decision on an array of options for combating fast-moving Islamic insurgents, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.

The U.S. and Iran also held an initial discussion on how the longtime foes might cooperate to ease the threat from the al-Qaida-linked militants that have swept through Iraq. Still, the White House ruled out the possibility that Washington and Tehran might coordinate military operations in Iraq.

Obama met with his national security team Monday evening to discuss options for stopping the militants known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Officials said the president has made no final decisions on how aggressively the U.S. might get involved in Iraq, though the White House continued to emphasize that any military engagement remained contingent on the government in Baghdad making political reforms.

Still, there were unmistakable signs of Americans returning to a country from which the U.S. military fully withdrew more than two years ago. Obama notified Congress that up to 275 troops would be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad. The soldiers — 170 of which have already arrived in Iraq — were armed for combat, though Obama has insisted he does not intend for U.S. forces to be engaged in direct fighting.

About 100 additional forces are being put on standby, most likely in Kuwait, and could be used for airfield management, security and logistics support, officials said.

Separately, three U.S. officials said the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces soldiers to Iraq. Their limited mission — which has not yet been approved — would focus on training and advising beleaguered Iraqi troops, many of whom have fled their posts across the nation's north and west as the al-Qaida-inspired insurgency has advanced in the worst threat to the country since American troops left in 2011.

Taken together, the developments suggest a willingness by Obama to send Americans into a collapsing security situation in order to quell the brutal fighting in Iraq before it morphs into outright war.

If the U.S. were to deploy an additional team of special forces, the mission almost certainly would be small. One U.S. official said it could be up to 100 special forces soldiers. It also could be authorized only as an advising and training mission — meaning the soldiers would work closely with Iraqi forces that are fighting the insurgency but would not officially be considered combat troops.

The White House would not confirm that special operations forces were under consideration. But spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that while Obama would not send troops back into combat, "He has asked his national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces."

It's not clear how quickly the special forces could arrive in Iraq. It's also unknown whether they would remain in Baghdad or be sent to the nation's north, where the Sunni Muslim insurgency has captured large swaths of territory ringing Baghdad, the capital of the Shiite-led government.

The troops would fall under the authority of the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and would not be authorized to engage in combat, another U.S. official said. Their mission would be "non-operational training" of both regular and counterterrorism units, which the military has in the past interpreted to mean training on military bases, the official said.

However, all U.S. troops are allowed to defend themselves in Iraq if they are under attack.

The three U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans by name.

Obama made the end of the war in Iraq one of his signature campaign issues, and has touted the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011 as one of his top foreign policy successes. But he has been caught over the past week between Iraqi officials pleading for help — as well as Republicans blaming him for the loss of a decade's worth of gains in Iraq — and his anti-war Democratic political base, which is demanding that the U.S. stay out of the fight.

The crisis has sparked a rare alignment of interests between the U.S. and Iran, which wants to preserve Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. The U.S. and Iran are engaged in sensitive nuclear negotiations and used a round of talks Monday in Vienna, Austria, to hold a separate bilateral discussion on Iraq.

While the U.S. and Iran have similar short-term goals in Iraq, they have different long-term aims. The United States would like to see an inclusive, representative democracy take hold in Iraq, while predominantly Shiite Iran is more focused on protecting Iraq's Shiite population and bolstering its own position as a regional power against powerful Sunni Arab states in the Gulf.

It's unclear what type of cooperation the U.S. and Iran could undertake. Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with Yahoo! News that the U.S. would "not rule out anything that would be constructive," though U.S. officials quickly tamped down speculation that the discussion might include military coordination or consultation.

While the White House continues to review its options, Iran's military leaders are starting to step into the breach.

The commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, was in Iraq on Monday and consulting with the government there on how to stave off insurgents' gains. Iraqi security officials said the U.S. government was notified in advance of the visit by Soleimani, whose forces are a secretive branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard that in the past has organized Shiite militias to target U.S. troops in Iraq and, more recently, was involved in helping Syria's President Bashar Assad in his fight against Sunni rebels.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor and Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Seven of the eight hair-hanging circus acrobats who fell to the ground during a "human chandelier" stunt in Providence last month have hired a Chicago-based law firm to represent them, the firm announced Monday.

The women were injured during a May 4 performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus when the apparatus from which they were suspended fell, sending them plummeting to the ground.

Lawyer Michael Krzak of Clifford Law Offices said the firm was recently hired and had not filed a lawsuit, but it is conducting an in-depth investigation into what happened. He said the firm plans to make available four of the injured acrobats to speak at a news conference Tuesday at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, although that number could change depending on their conditions.

While one of the acrobats, Samantha Pitard, was released from the hospital within days, some have severe injuries, and doctors have said it's not clear whether two with spinal cord injuries will walk again. The law firm said some of the women are undergoing physical therapy. Some are still using wheelchairs and it's unknown to what extent they will regain the full use of their limbs. Some of the women require more surgery.

When asked about their conditions and where they are seeking treatment, Krzak called it a "fluid situation" and said they're often in and out of facilities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

"They're going wherever they need to go to get the care they need," he said.

Pitard, 23, a native of Champaign, Illinois, is among the seven who hired the law firm, according to a firm spokeswoman. Krzak said the eighth acrobat had hired a local lawyer because of what he termed a personal decision. He said he expected he would work together with that lawyer.

The other injured acrobats are from Brazil, Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus, said the women are still covered by the company's health insurance but he did not know details about their conditions because the families had asked for privacy.

Providence police have said they suspect a 4- to 5-inch steel carabiner clip at the top of the apparatus snapped. It was found in three pieces on the ground with its spine snapped.

Police turned the clip and the results of their investigation to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where investigators said they were still probing the accident as of Monday.

Krzak said the firm has sent a letter to OSHA, Feld and others telling them to preserve evidence. They have not yet seen the carabiner, cable or mechanism that suspended the women, he said.

He said they also haven't spoken with Andrey Medeiros, who with his wife, Viktoriya, designed the act, about the mechanism or how it works. Viktoriya Medeiros was among the injured.