Washington’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets “affordable” rent at equal to or less than 30 percent of a renter’s income. According to a study published in December, a worker today would need to earn $15.37 an hour in order to afford the average two-bedroom apartment in the United States.

The report, published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, says that in only four out of the 3,066 U.S. counties can a worker making minimum wage afford a one-bedroom apartment by the federal government’s standards. In the 991 counties where 80 percent of the nation’s 36 million renter households are concentrated, a worker making the state’s minimum wage would need to work an average of 80 hours a week in order to afford the rent on the average two-bedroom apartment.

“It’s very clear that over the last decade rents have been going up all the time—sometimes quicker, sometimes not so quick—but at the same time wages for the lowest wage-earners have basically stagnated, except for a brief period in the late 1990s,” Danilo Pelletiere, an author of the report, told the Militant in a telephone interview.

In 2004, nominal hourly wages increased by 2.6 percent, while the Consumer Price Index included a 2.9 percent nationwide rise in rents. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, real average weekly earnings—after adjustments for inflation—actually fell by 0.6 percent overall in the first 11 months of 2004. Last November, these earnings remained close to where they stood at the end of the last recession in November 2001.

The minimum wage, for its part, has continued to lose value. Today’s $5.15 hourly federal minimum wage is worth $2 less than it did in 1968.

In the state of New York, 57 percent of the average median income is needed to afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment. It goes up to nearly 65 percent for two-bedroom apartments. For affordable rent on a two-bedroom apartment, a worker in New York would need to earn $18.18 an hour. At minimum wage, you would need to put in 121 hours a week to pay the landlord for the average two-bedroom apartment.

An article in the December 30 New York Times reported on a study that is set to be published in January by the Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement. The study shows that nearly half the households in the city do not earn enough to pay their basic living costs. The report estimates that income needed to afford this minimum standard in the city is more than three times the national poverty level.

In particular, the report shows the extent to which the economic grind is falling disproportionately on working-class women. An average single mother with two young kids in New York City, for example, will pay more in a year for child care than rent, the study shows. The next largest expense after rent and child care is taxes, consuming 15 percent of income.

“The report’s minimum recommended income level has risen substantially throughout the city since the last time it was issued, in 2000,” the Times reported, “primarily because of soaring housing costs.”  
 
 
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