It really doesn’t make sense to lump rent and mortgage together, and I feel like Gen Z is hit hardest because they’d have the lowest rates of homeownership.

The real title is the title of the graph in the artle: “Gen Zers Most Likely to Struggle with Housing Payments”.

The article is lumping rent and mortgage together because including both covers all ways someone can pay for housing. The “hit hardest” part is in there to communicate that, while GenZ is getting its ass kicked the most on housing costs, it isn’t the only generation having trouble.