- NLIHC
- From the ‘Out of Reach’ report: “In no state can an individual working a typical 40-hour workweek at the federal minimum wage afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment for his or her family.”
The gap between wages and rents is an uncomfortably familiar source of constant, low-level panic for many Americans, but the National Low Income Housing Coalition recently measured exactly how wide that gap is in its annual Out of Reach report.
NLIHC has published the ominously-titled study every year for the past 26 years. It crunches federal data from the Census Bureau, Social Security, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other agencies. “The study consistently shows the same thing, only worse every year,” says Sheila Crowley, the organization’s president and CEO. “The cost of housing continues to outstretch incomes at the lower end.”
Oregon ranks 25th worst (Washington is 10th worst) in the triangulation between rents and wages, requiring an average $16.61 hourly wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair-market rate. To afford a two-bedroom in Multnomah County, you’d need to make $18.15 per hour, or work 79 hours per week at minimum wage, which is currently $9.25.
Despite localized minimum-wage increases in states like Oregon and Washington, Crowley says “there is still no place in the country where you can work full-time on prevailing minimum wage and afford to rent a modest home—by the standard of not paying more than 30 percent of your income.”
Download the full .pdf of the “Out of Reach” report and swim around in the depressing data.
The study was funded in part by JPMorgan Chase—which agreed to a record $13 billion settlement with the US government for its “alleged bad behavior relating to mortgages and mortgage-backed bonds” that many believe was a key factor in the 2008 financial crisis.
Some of that settlement money was set aside to alleviate housing crises across the country, but Crowley says that’s not the pot of money NLIHC’s support comes from. “We enjoy the support of all the major banks and have for many years,” she says. “Their charitable wings support various housing advocacy efforts and we greatly appreciate that—it also has to be clear that they have no influence over our policy decisions.”
Out of Reach, she says, is the only annual research publication that analyzes rental costs for low-income people in every jurisdiction of the United States.
The report is put together for policymakers and advocates, but also for regular folks wondering why they’re being pushed farther and farther from their old communities and workplaces.
“It can’t help them get housing,” Crowley says, “but it can at least help them understand why they can’t find it: ‘It’s not just my problem; it’s a structural problem.'”
It seems like 1 person would only need to be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment. 2 bedroom apartments would be for 2 people which would need half of the wage.
@Econoline – There are lots of single parents out there, though.
And although they didn’t mention it here, the report points that that someone making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour can’t afford a 1-bedroom apartment in ANY state.
@Reymont the problem of people with no skills who choose to have children anyway and can’t afford to care for them is of course a separate problem that probably needs its own solution. I will agree however that one should be able to afford a one bedroom if one has a 40 hour per week job. Of course part of the problem in portland is the NIMBY crowd that doesn’t particularly want 1 bedroom apartments to be built.
But what would happen to America’s work ethic if you can keep a roof over your head just for flipping burgers?
/sarcasm
Ravi from Cozy here (we’re a PDX startup that, in part, helps collect rent for tenants and landlords, so we have some additional data — we’re at https://cozy.co/).
The report indicates that the Fair Market Rent is $944 in Portland metro area, but we see an average rent paid for a 2-bedroom at $1476! (That’s processed payments, not the price of advertised vacancies.)
To pay that as a single renter under the 30% guideline, you’d need to be making around $28.38 an hour (or work 123 hours a week, at $9.25 per hour — nearly 18 hours a day!).
And of course, the “30% of your income” towards housing assumes that you don’t have a metric fuckload of student loans, credit card debt, medical bills…
In the interest of looking at the bigger picture, when and where was the last time/place that you could work full time at minimum wage and afford a two bedroom apartment? Is this a recent development? Or is it simply a change in expectations?