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| A distressing gap persists between the availability of affordable housing and the need for it. |
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| Sample of Housing Wage by State |
| Most Expensive |
| Massachusetts |
$22.40 |
| California |
$21.18 |
| New Jersey |
$19.74 |
| New York |
$18.87 |
| Maryland |
$18.85 |
| Least Expensive |
| Alabama |
$9.33 |
| Mississippi |
$9.07 |
| Arkansas |
$9.04 |
| West Virginia |
$8.78 |
| Puerto Rico |
$8.59 |
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Despite the wealth of the United States as a whole, millions of American families--about one in three--spend more than they can afford for housing. While homeownership rates are at record highs across the country, some 36 million households rent, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition--and most people must pay too much. Consider this: Nowhere in the United States can a minimum-wage earner afford a two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent.
Not only are families paying exorbitant amounts for housing, but too often the housing they find is substandard, with faulty wiring and insufficient plumbing, leaky roofs and structural deficiencies.
In order to raise awareness of the problem with affordable housing in the United States and to document it with concrete numbers, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition publishes a report each year called "Out of Reach." In it are statistical comparisons of wages and rents for every county, state, metropolitan and non-metropolitan area in the United States. "Out of Reach" also lists each state’s Housing Wage, which is the hourly wage a worker must earn to afford a two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent.
Following are some excerpts from "Out of Reach," which indicate that far too few people in the United States are able to find housing they can afford. To read more about the report or to order a hard copy, visit www.nlihc.org/oor2003/index.php. For more information, contact the National Low-Income Housing Coalition at (202) 662-1530.
- The national Housing Wage for 2003 is $15.21 an hour, or $31,637 a year--almost three times the federal minimum wage.
- In 2003, housing costs have risen faster than wages and the cost of other goods. The national Housing Wage increased by 3.7 percent between 2002 and 2003, while inflation was 2.1 percent.
- The Housing Wage has increased 37 percent since 1999, when a person had to earn $11.08 an hour to afford Fair Market Rent on a national basis.
- Housing costs are especially acute for families earning wages in the services sector, which continues to represent a fast-growing portion of the national economy. The average income earned by families with extremely low incomes (those at 30 percent or below of their area’s median income) is $8.34 an hour, yet there is no state in which an extremely low-income household can afford the Fair Market Rent on a two-bedroom home.
- The report also highlights the inadequacy of the federal minimum wage, which has been $5.15 an hour since 1997, to allow access to decent housing.
--Shawn Reeves
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