You Will Need $ 22 an Hour to Afford the Rent of a Two-Room Apartment in the United States.
There is no place in the US where a full-time worker with a federal minimum wage of $ 7.25 could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, working 40 hours a week, according to a study published Wednesday by the National Housing Coalition for the Poor. … In fact, workers need to earn an average of $ 22.10 an hour to afford a modest two-room apartment (and $ 17.90 for a one-room apartment) without spending more than 30 percent of their income.
The NLIHC used the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s fair market rent calculation and compared it to nationwide hourly wages.
The report estimates that the average hourly worker in the US makes $ 16.88 an hour, which means that even a studio apartment will be a stretch for most budgets. Wages for two-bedroom rentals range from $ 13.84 in Arkansas to $ 36.13 in Hawaii.
Unsurprisingly, three of the top five metropolitan areas with the highest wages for housing are in California, including Oakland Fremont ($ 44.79 an hour), San Jose Sunnyvale Santa Clara ($ 48.50 an hour) and San Francisco ($ 60.02 an hour). Stamford Norwalk, Connecticut and Honolulu, Hawaii also contributed to the cut at $ 38.19 and $ 39.06 per hour, respectively.
While the inability to pay rent is clearly not limited to minimum-wage workers, “very low-income tenants,” or those identified by the NLIHC as earning less than $ 26,420 per year for a family of four, will be the hardest hit. While they can afford to pay a maximum of $ 660 a month for a home, the national average fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $ 931 a month, according to the report, and $ 1,149 for a two-bedroom apartment.
The report notes that the main driving force behind the housing affordability crisis is income inequality and slow wage growth for low-income workers. While real hourly wages rose 51.7 percent between 1979 and 2016 for 95th percentile workers, they rose just 4.4 percent for 10th percentile workers. Meanwhile, developers are building more luxury apartments than moderately priced apartments, which sharply raises rental prices.
If you want to see how your area is doing, you can use the NLIHC search tool to find the average home value in your zip code.