I agree that shelter(housing) prices increasing at 5% is not good, but when we're seeing inflation of 8.5% there's something else that's driving things up.
When you look at just the energy component of the CPI you'll notice that it began to outpace inflation in March of 2021 at 13.2% and has fluctuated between 25% and 32% since them. The previous chart on that page that breaks down the most recent month's inflation between food, energy, and all other items you see that food is in-line with inflation, energy is crazy, and other items are at 6.5%.
We have a lot of problems going on right now, but why the energy sector has been experiencing crazy inflation for the last year might be more of a factor that the other things grabbing the headlines right now.
Shelter isn't housing, it's rent. Housing is up much more -- 21.7% YoY (as of January 2022, on top of 9% the previous year [1]) -- but that isn't directly captured in the CPI. Shelter CPI goes approximately as a massive low-pass filter on the product of (housing prices x mortgage rates), and so rising interest rates can carry shelter up higher, even after housing prices plateau.
When you look at just the energy component of the CPI you'll notice that it began to outpace inflation in March of 2021 at 13.2% and has fluctuated between 25% and 32% since them. The previous chart on that page that breaks down the most recent month's inflation between food, energy, and all other items you see that food is in-line with inflation, energy is crazy, and other items are at 6.5%.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
We have a lot of problems going on right now, but why the energy sector has been experiencing crazy inflation for the last year might be more of a factor that the other things grabbing the headlines right now.