Focus Ireland says some people with full time jobs are spending up to 70% of their income on renting in the city.
The housing and homeless charity made the comments at the launch of their new Focus On Homelessness report which says some people are being forced to move out of the city and settle in towns and villages due to high rents.
The report shows the number of people living in emergency accommodation in Cork more than doubled from 200 in 2014 to 412 in June of this year.
The most up to date figures from the Department of Housing show 60 families with 122 children were living in emergency accommodation in Cork and Kerry during September.
Speaking to RedFM News, Gerard Spillane from Focus Ireland says people are now finding it hard to find places to live in county towns.
"Kanturk or Mallow or Midleton would have been able to take the excess in the past, they can no longer do that because as demand increases in the city people have to move further outside of the city to work.
"We have people working in the city moving down to one and half hour commutes outside of the city down to west Cork or east Cork.
"We also know of people who are working in shift patterns spending some of the week in B&Bs and the rest of the week in family homes simply because they cannot afford the rent."
