Wow, that is terrible. It would be trivial to track recently rented homes on Zillow or Redfin and ask the renters to use the figure on the rental contracts from those.
Rents are tracked separately, but weighted less than OER, presumably because most people own their houses. See "Rent of primary residence" and "Owners' equivalent rent of residences" in https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t02.htm
