$60/Hour Needed To Afford 2-Bedroom San Francisco Apartment
- by Shaun Olson
- in Finance
- — Jun 15, 2018
The annual Out of Reach report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition analyzed every county in the USA and found that there isn't anywhere that someone working a minimum wage job, 40 hours a week, can afford a two-bedroom. Each has a higher minimum wage than the $7.25 federal minimum.
In the Boston-Quincy-Cambridge area, workers would need to earn over $33 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Even workers earning more than the minimum wage are struggling. The three occupations with the greatest projected growth that pay a median wage higher than the housing wage are general operations managers, software developers and registered nurses. In the Burlington-South Burlington area, the housing wage is $27.73, but that wage drops to $15.21 in Orleans County. If a worker held 2.5 full-time jobs, they would make $25.70 an hour - that's more than the national housing wage, yet still not enough for Hawaii's steep real estate market.
Local reports have also pointed to the acute shortage of housing for very low-income renters in Charlotte.
The number of renters has increased by almost 10 million since 2005, but most new rental construction over the past ten years has been geared toward the high end of the rental market.
More news: Liverpool ace Salah could miss Egypt openerThe data gives fresher context to affordable housing fights taking place across the country.
In Ohio, the fair market rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $793. In the East Bay, it's $45 an hour, or $93,000 a year, according to the "Out of Reach" study released Wednesday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The housing wage for a one-bedroom apartment in Washington is $21.65. The housing wage for a one-bedroom apartment there is $14.64. Seven of the ten jobs expected to grow the most over the next decade pay less than the amount needed to afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment, according to the report. That's based on the common budgeting standard of spending a maximum of 30 percent of income on housing. For a one-bedroom apartment, the NLIHC's report found you'd have to bring in $17.90 an hour. The number of homes renting for $2,000 or more per month almost doubled between 2005 and 2015.
"The housing crisis has reached historic heights, most negatively impacting the lowest income renters", said Diane Yentel, the coalition's CEO". As it stands, only 1 in 4 households eligible for federal rent assistance gets any help, the report said. Bernie Sanders wrote in the report's preface. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson recently proposed tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements on those receiving rent subsidies.
