NLIHC Releases Out of Reach 2013

The National Low Income Housing Coalition released Out of Reach 2013 on March 11. The report shows that rents continue to rise across the country as wages remain stagnant. This year, a household needs to earn at least $39,080 to afford a two-bedroom unit at the Fair Market Rent (FMR) of $977. This translates into an hourly Housing Wage of $18.79. The Housing Wage is an estimate of the full-time hourly wage that someone must earn to afford a decent apartment while spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs.Unfortunately, renters continue to earn far less than the Housing Wage. According to Out of Reach 2013, renters are earning just $14.32 an hour, on average, nationwide. This means that the two-bedroom Housing Wage exceeds the wage of renters by almost $4.50. The wage a renter must earn to afford a one-bedroom unit ($15.06) also exceeds the national renter wage this year. Extremely low income (ELI) households and minimum wage workers have the hardest time finding rents that are affordable to them. ELI households, with incomes of 30% of the area median income (AMI) or less, compose one out of every four renter households in our country. ELI renter households can afford to spend no more than $495 on rent, on average, nationwide. This falls significantly short of both the national two-bedroom FMR ($977) and one-bedroom FMR ($783).Minimum wage households, earning just $7.25 an hour in many parts of the country, can only afford $377 a month in rent. At minimum wage, a worker must work 104 hours a week to afford the FMR on a two-bedroom unit, and he or she would need to work 83 hours per week to afford the FMR on a one-bedroom unit. There are just four counties in the United States where a minimum wage earner can afford the one-bedroom FMR. These counties are in Washington and Oregon, where the minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum wage at $9.19 and $8.95, respectively. In addition to these national numbers, NLIHC calculates the same statistics for every county, metropolitan area, combined nonmetropolitan area and state in the country. There were twelve states this year with a Housing Wage over $20 (up from nine in 2012): Hawaii, District of Columbia, California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Alaska, Virginia, Delaware and New Hampshire. The report was released in a press conference that featured NLIHC President and CEO Sheila Crowley, NLIHC Research Director Megan Bolton and the Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, Barbara Poppe. Ms. Poppe, who also wrote the preface to this year’s report, emphasized the need for high-quality research, like Out of Reach, to define the affordable housing problem and point us toward solutions. She talked about how difficult it is for low-wage workers to find affordable rental housing in their communities and how increased access to stable and affordable housing is key to preventing and ending homelessness. Both Ms. Poppe and Ms. Crowley discussed how the National Housing Trust Fund, if funded, could assist those households most at risk of becoming homeless. Out of Reach 2013 can be found at http://nlihc.org/oor/2013.To view the press release on the report, see http://nlihc.org/press/releases/2380.