"the poorest spend at least half of their wage on rent" Now that I believe. Similar situation in the US for sure. Hard to find places less than $800 a month

"the poorest spend at least half of their wage on rent" Now that I believe. Similar situation in the US for sure. Hard to find places less than $800 a month in most places and those places usually aren't great. If you're making 20-25k a year, that's easily close to 10k on rent (40-50%) and doesn't generally include all utilities. It wasn't even all that many years ago that I was in my first job out of school making substantially less than I am now. Even though I was well above poverty level, I was still spending around 22k on housing (I bought a small house which cost $1800 a month for mortgage + property tax, not including utilities). So it was still in the 40-50% range for me and I had a job way above minimum wage with benefits at a major corporation.