I will forever fail to understand why commenters on hacker news ask questions for which the answer is public and readily available. I think it's because they think that the answer to the question will favor them and the idea is that astute readers will do research and thus be convinced of the commenter's point.

Unfortunately, in this case, an astute reader would do research and conclude that the point you are trying to make is completely mythical. Housing (total, rent + everything else) accounts for 42% of the CPI calculation, and the 'owners equivalent of rent' (i.e. how much you would have to pay to rent your home) makes up ~24%: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf

That captures rent renters pay as well, since for apartment buildings, the owner's equivalent rent is the rent being paid.

In PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures), it's weighted half as much. Is the median person really paying only 12.9% (or 15.3%) of their income for rent? Seems like it's usually closer to 30-40%, and sometimes higher for the working class. (12.9%-15.3% of median household income is only ~$7740-9180 which would be only $645-765/mo.)

That one at least weights medical care at 22.3% ($13380) vs the 6.2% ($3700) in CPI, although that might be realistic if the median person simply doesn't get medical care because they can't afford it.