4 ms·

Misleading title. The study found that the minimum wage isn't enough to afford the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental. Trying to compare averag

Misleading title. The study found that the minimum wage isn't enough to afford the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental. Trying to compare average rents to minimum wages doesn't make sense, as anyone earning minimum wage wouldn't be in the market for an average-price two-bedroom rental. It would have been more useful if they had studied something like bottom decile wages compared to bottom decile rents.

cratermoon 5y ago
Handwavy nonsense. If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Also, compare rents and minimum wage in say, 1979-1982 to now.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Yes, the study would have been more useful if they examined whether or not minimum wage could afford any two-bedroom, not the average two-bedroom. It's the mixing of minimum wages and average rents that is misleading. We need to look at minimum wages compared to minimum rents, not average rents.
  - plandis 5y ago
    Would it matter if minimum wage can’t afford you any two bedroom apartments? It’s not clear that it’s truly necessary to me.
    - tompazourek 5y ago
      The title says that minimum wage cannot afford any apartments, while it should actually say that minimum wage cannot afford average two bedroom apartments. The current title is misleading as it's not true that minimum wage cannot afford renting at all. They can, for example, afford cheaper-than-average two bedroom apartments. It's just arguing about the misleading title...
  - ahoy 5y ago
    So if there are 35000 adults in a city making minimum wage and 200 total 2br apartments they can afford, does that somehow lead us to a different conclusion? Of course it doesn't.
    - gruez 5y ago
      Maybe those 35,000 adults should move somewhere where pay is better and/or rent is cheaper. This isn't a hard concept. If there are 35,000 hunter-gatherers in a forest that can only support 400, are we supposed to sympathize with the stubborn ones that don't want to move out?
      - ahoy 5y ago
        Your analogy is nonsense. There are another 3000 hunter-gatherers who have hoarded 90% of the resources. If we split up the resources more equally we could support everyone easily.
        gruez 5y ago
        The 3000 billionaires are hoarding 90% of housing supply in major cities? I doubt that. The lack of housing in such places has less to do with wealth concentration to billionaires and more with local grassroots opposition for new housing developments.
      - lovich 5y ago
        Is moving free/cheap for you? I’m fairly well off and the actual financial moving costs were enough to keep me from seeking a better deal on only every 3+ years when I would have been willing to spend the time (1 weekend) to move every year
        gruez 5y ago
        Well we could subsidize people to move to a place that's affordable, but I suspect that has similar optics to "giving homeless people bus tickets to another town"
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Some of the weird reaction to this type of comment is that being more scientifically accurate about the problem is perceived as being less persuasive about the importance of correcting the problem. Making the numbers more right doesn’t make the reality any less cruel, and more accurate numbers don’t seem to help persuade anyone to care. So it’s legitimate to say “could be better!”, but that’s often viewed as important relative to the issue itself: people can’t afford a home in America.
    - fho 5y ago
      I just want to note that while housing prices are probably normally distributed, "minimum wage" is a "arbitrary" value that cuts of the long tail (effectively increasing average wages). As, per that definition, wages are now not normally distributed anymore it (statistically) does not even make sense to talk about average (i.e. mean) wages anymore. More anecdotally: I recently looked up mean and median wages in Germany. And what I found is that the median netto income (per employer) does not really differ from the netto income per household. I guess that means that the average German household only has one person working (while the other is probably taking care of potential kids).
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Making the numbers more right doesn’t make the reality any less cruel, and more accurate numbers don’t seem to help persuade anyone to care. ...and that's how you end up with polarization with media. Neutral/objective reporting gets dropped because it "seem to help persuade anyone to care". It's replaced with misleading reporting optimized for shock value which gets a pass from one side because it fits in with their narrative, but is rejected by the other because of how biased it is.
      - floatingatoll 5y ago
        Studies show that the narrative will be rejected just as strongly if it’s presented neutrally with facts alone. I don’t disagree with your point in general, but non-polarized news isn’t much more able to get through to opposed people than polarized news. It turns out to be more complicated, generally requiring personalized one-on-one conversations, and can’t really be scaled up to broadcast media.
- Fantosism 5y ago
  I disagree and don't believe that minimum wage should sustain a single adult with kids. It should sustain a kid or maybe an adult individual with support from a 3rd party. Compare the amount of adults that held minimum wage jobs in say, 1979-1982 to now.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Should everyone be able to afford the average rent?
  - droptablemain 5y ago
    Nah, they should just sleep on the street. But not your street, of course -- somewhere far away and out of your sight.
    - gjs278 5y ago
      they could get a roommate or a partner
    - gruez 5y ago
      You fell for the trap in the parent post's phrasing. Everyone not being able to afford the average rent (ie. there is at least one person that can't afford the average rent) doesn't mean people will be homeless. The people making minimum wage can live in below average housing
      - ben0x539 5y ago
        Maybe you're falling for a trap here too? The phrasing implies the availability of a sufficient supply of adequate housing that's meaningfully below average rent, but that doesn't seem obvious to me.
        avalys 5y ago
        What fraction of the housing supply do you believe is available at “below average rent”?
        rufus_foreman 5y ago
        1/2
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  Compare real estate prices in Tokyo to San Fransisco or New York in the same time period. This is what anti-density zoning causes.
- nonethewiser 5y ago
  If an adult has 5 kids they're going to need even more.
  - bluejellybean 5y ago
    If an adult has 10 kids they're going to need even more.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
      If a child has eight kids they’re going to need more still.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  If an adult with 8 kids is making minimum wage they need to be able to rent a 7 bedroom.
  - sparrish 5y ago
    An adult with 8 kids will easily qualify for section 8 and will be able to get into a 7 bedroom.
    - gruez 5y ago
      You mean the one with the huge waiting list?
- Kalium 5y ago
  > If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Handwavy nonsense. There are lots of places in the world where three or more people live in the space of a studio apartment. The point being not that this is a reasonable standard of living, but that what can be asserted without support can be dismissed without support.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Handwavy nonsense. There are lots of places in the world where three or more people live in the space of a studio apartment. In the US, some CPS will require kids to have their own bedrooms. Certain states also have housing laws requiring kids of certain ages to have their own bedrooms, as well. Property owners who take government housing benefits are also required to make sure children have their own bedrooms.
    - briandear 5y ago
      If they are taking housing benefits then the cost of rent is no factor.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > some CPS will require kids to have their own bedrooms. AFAIK, rules of that type in state law, regulation, or child services practice generally apply strictly to substitute placements like foster and prospective or probationary adoptive homes, not regular custodial family settings, and even then usually allow room sharing for all of infants with parents, with children under a threshold age (commonly 5 or a little older), and children of the same gender regardless of age, though there may be numerical limits to each. If you can cite a specific rule or supportive case that not having their own room alone can be a basis for CPS action anywhere in the US against a parent with permanent custody, please share. > Property owners who take government housing benefits are also required to make sure children have their own bedrooms. No, they aren't. In fact, subsidy programs often set a maximum number of bedrooms of a subsidized unit as number of people/2, rounded up to a whole number [0], absolutely preventing each child from having a bedroom unless there is exactly one child. Which is one reason the earlier claim about CPS is not true. [0] for an example, see https://www.scchousingauthority.org/section-8-current-participants/housing-choice-voucher-current-participants/subsidy-standards/ https://www.scchousingauthority.org/section-8-current-partic... — note that the 2 occupants per bedroom standard is a national HUD standard (stemming from the 1991 Keating memo, subsequently mandated for adoption as HUD policy by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998.)
- gruez 5y ago
  >Handwavy nonsense. If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. This is changing the goalposts. It's no longer "Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America" but rather "Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America if they're single parents". Just for kicks you can extend this arbitrarily. Why stop at kids? What about your mom and dad too, for a multigenerational household?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Minimum wage isn't about extending it arbitrarily. By design and intent, it's supposed to be enough to raise a family on one income.
    - username90 5y ago
      Why should minimum wage be enough to raise a family on one income? Why can't people do it together?
      - willcipriano 5y ago
        I don't think the minimum wage is the best solution for the problem, however it must be noted that the families that are the worst off tend to live in places where it is more common to not have a male adult in the household then the reverse. Two incomes to support a family only works if dad sticks around and actively participates in maintaining the household (of course single dad's exist too, but that is dramatically less common).
      - TomVDB 5y ago
        Because there are plenty of circumstances where living together is not possible. What’s wrong with there being a system in place that ensures that everybody, irrespective of having gone through divorce, or death, medical issues etc, has a chance to survive with a roof about their head and some food on the table?
    - gruez 5y ago
      >By design and intent, it's supposed to be enough to raise a family on one income. A lot has changed since when it was first enacted. Most notably, families switched from single earner to dual earner.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. No disrespect is intended to anyone, but by definition a person making minimum wage is poor and why can’t they live in a single bedroom apartment or even a studio. Where does it say that minimum wage = every occupant gets their own bedroom? In large parts of the world families share bedrooms. Please note I’m not saying these people should not try to better their lives, but people making minimum wage need to compromise.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    The Tyranny of Meritocracy.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      Not sure what you mean but I realized that no matter how I phrase my comment, it has the potential to be misinterpreted. I simply was trying to say that minimum wage has a definition, and I’m assuming that definition is safe housing and sufficient food and other necessities. I’m assuming that it does not mean a certain size of housing, designer clothes, eating out a certain times a week and so on, since after all by definition it is minimum.
- thordenmark 5y ago
  If an adult with kids is only making minimum wage, they have a lot more problems than rent.
- sershe 5y ago
  1) No, they don't "need" to be able to rent a 2-bedroom. 2-bedroom is a luxury in most of the world, either because well, it is, or because housing is equity-focused and therefore shitty (case in point is me growing up in the USSR with 2 engineer parents and a sister, in a 700sqft 1-bedroom equivalent). Someone contributing the equivalent of minimum wage is not generally expected to be able to afford luxuries. 2) Having children while on minimum wage is child abuse. Similarly, nobody owes them the right to have children, and nobody should be obliged to pay for such profligate hobbies. Perhaps they should devote the time and resources otherwise spent on child-rearing to create more value for others first.
ben0x539 5y ago
> anyone earning minimum wage wouldn't be in the market for an average-price two-bedroom rental Isn't that what the article is saying?
adventured 5y ago
Further, less than 250,000 people out of 161 million in the US laborforce are actually earning the minimum wage. It's less than one sixth of one percent. If you listened to the propaganda, you'd think it were 20% of the laborforce. Which warrants a few other questions, including how many of those minimum wage workers are living with their parents rent free, what the average age of those workers is, and so on. This study instantly becomes that much more absurd if you actually analyze the minimum wage worker segment. It ends up you're talking about 1/20th of 1% of the laborforce that it reasonably applies to.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  Could you please provide a source for those hard numbers?
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    247,000 people reported making federal minimum wage in 2020 according to BLS data.[1] It's a little less than 1/6% of 161 million. This excludes 865,000 who reported making less. And a probably much larger number making local minimum wages. And any self employed or salaried workers who make minimum wage or less effectively. And anyone making the slightest amount more. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.htm
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Even those numbers are highly misleading since half the states in the US (containing a strong majority of the population) have minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage.
    - gruez 5y ago
      But if they're making below minimum wage, why should we expect a change in minimum wage policy to help these people? Clearly their employers aren't interested in following minimum wage laws.
      - 5y ago
Eridrus 5y ago
I am so tired of these articles. It's easy click-bait, but maybe a news organization and do some reporting on the actual living conditions for minimum wage workers since they're clearly living somewhere.

cratermoon 5y ago

Handwavy nonsense. If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Also, compare rents and minimum wage in say, 1979-1982 to now.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Yes, the study would have been more useful if they examined whether or not minimum wage could afford any two-bedroom, not the average two-bedroom. It's the mixing of minimum wages and average rents that is misleading. We need to look at minimum wages compared to minimum rents, not average rents.
- plandis 5y ago
  Would it matter if minimum wage can’t afford you any two bedroom apartments? It’s not clear that it’s truly necessary to me.
  - tompazourek 5y ago
    The title says that minimum wage cannot afford any apartments, while it should actually say that minimum wage cannot afford average two bedroom apartments. The current title is misleading as it's not true that minimum wage cannot afford renting at all. They can, for example, afford cheaper-than-average two bedroom apartments. It's just arguing about the misleading title...
- ahoy 5y ago
  So if there are 35000 adults in a city making minimum wage and 200 total 2br apartments they can afford, does that somehow lead us to a different conclusion? Of course it doesn't.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Maybe those 35,000 adults should move somewhere where pay is better and/or rent is cheaper. This isn't a hard concept. If there are 35,000 hunter-gatherers in a forest that can only support 400, are we supposed to sympathize with the stubborn ones that don't want to move out?
    - ahoy 5y ago
      Your analogy is nonsense. There are another 3000 hunter-gatherers who have hoarded 90% of the resources. If we split up the resources more equally we could support everyone easily.
      - gruez 5y ago
        The 3000 billionaires are hoarding 90% of housing supply in major cities? I doubt that. The lack of housing in such places has less to do with wealth concentration to billionaires and more with local grassroots opposition for new housing developments.
    - lovich 5y ago
      Is moving free/cheap for you? I’m fairly well off and the actual financial moving costs were enough to keep me from seeking a better deal on only every 3+ years when I would have been willing to spend the time (1 weekend) to move every year
      - gruez 5y ago
        Well we could subsidize people to move to a place that's affordable, but I suspect that has similar optics to "giving homeless people bus tickets to another town"
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Some of the weird reaction to this type of comment is that being more scientifically accurate about the problem is perceived as being less persuasive about the importance of correcting the problem. Making the numbers more right doesn’t make the reality any less cruel, and more accurate numbers don’t seem to help persuade anyone to care. So it’s legitimate to say “could be better!”, but that’s often viewed as important relative to the issue itself: people can’t afford a home in America.
  - fho 5y ago
    I just want to note that while housing prices are probably normally distributed, "minimum wage" is a "arbitrary" value that cuts of the long tail (effectively increasing average wages). As, per that definition, wages are now not normally distributed anymore it (statistically) does not even make sense to talk about average (i.e. mean) wages anymore. More anecdotally: I recently looked up mean and median wages in Germany. And what I found is that the median netto income (per employer) does not really differ from the netto income per household. I guess that means that the average German household only has one person working (while the other is probably taking care of potential kids).
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Making the numbers more right doesn’t make the reality any less cruel, and more accurate numbers don’t seem to help persuade anyone to care. ...and that's how you end up with polarization with media. Neutral/objective reporting gets dropped because it "seem to help persuade anyone to care". It's replaced with misleading reporting optimized for shock value which gets a pass from one side because it fits in with their narrative, but is rejected by the other because of how biased it is.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Studies show that the narrative will be rejected just as strongly if it’s presented neutrally with facts alone. I don’t disagree with your point in general, but non-polarized news isn’t much more able to get through to opposed people than polarized news. It turns out to be more complicated, generally requiring personalized one-on-one conversations, and can’t really be scaled up to broadcast media.
Fantosism 5y ago
I disagree and don't believe that minimum wage should sustain a single adult with kids. It should sustain a kid or maybe an adult individual with support from a 3rd party. Compare the amount of adults that held minimum wage jobs in say, 1979-1982 to now.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Should everyone be able to afford the average rent?
- droptablemain 5y ago
  Nah, they should just sleep on the street. But not your street, of course -- somewhere far away and out of your sight.
  - gjs278 5y ago
    they could get a roommate or a partner
  - gruez 5y ago
    You fell for the trap in the parent post's phrasing. Everyone not being able to afford the average rent (ie. there is at least one person that can't afford the average rent) doesn't mean people will be homeless. The people making minimum wage can live in below average housing
    - ben0x539 5y ago
      Maybe you're falling for a trap here too? The phrasing implies the availability of a sufficient supply of adequate housing that's meaningfully below average rent, but that doesn't seem obvious to me.
      - avalys 5y ago
        What fraction of the housing supply do you believe is available at “below average rent”?
        rufus_foreman 5y ago
        1/2
knownjorbist 5y ago
Compare real estate prices in Tokyo to San Fransisco or New York in the same time period. This is what anti-density zoning causes.
nonethewiser 5y ago
If an adult has 5 kids they're going to need even more.
- bluejellybean 5y ago
  If an adult has 10 kids they're going to need even more.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
    If a child has eight kids they’re going to need more still.
oh_sigh 5y ago
If an adult with 8 kids is making minimum wage they need to be able to rent a 7 bedroom.
- sparrish 5y ago
  An adult with 8 kids will easily qualify for section 8 and will be able to get into a 7 bedroom.
  - gruez 5y ago
    You mean the one with the huge waiting list?
Kalium 5y ago
> If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. Handwavy nonsense. There are lots of places in the world where three or more people live in the space of a studio apartment. The point being not that this is a reasonable standard of living, but that what can be asserted without support can be dismissed without support.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Handwavy nonsense. There are lots of places in the world where three or more people live in the space of a studio apartment. In the US, some CPS will require kids to have their own bedrooms. Certain states also have housing laws requiring kids of certain ages to have their own bedrooms, as well. Property owners who take government housing benefits are also required to make sure children have their own bedrooms.
  - briandear 5y ago
    If they are taking housing benefits then the cost of rent is no factor.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > some CPS will require kids to have their own bedrooms. AFAIK, rules of that type in state law, regulation, or child services practice generally apply strictly to substitute placements like foster and prospective or probationary adoptive homes, not regular custodial family settings, and even then usually allow room sharing for all of infants with parents, with children under a threshold age (commonly 5 or a little older), and children of the same gender regardless of age, though there may be numerical limits to each. If you can cite a specific rule or supportive case that not having their own room alone can be a basis for CPS action anywhere in the US against a parent with permanent custody, please share. > Property owners who take government housing benefits are also required to make sure children have their own bedrooms. No, they aren't. In fact, subsidy programs often set a maximum number of bedrooms of a subsidized unit as number of people/2, rounded up to a whole number [0], absolutely preventing each child from having a bedroom unless there is exactly one child. Which is one reason the earlier claim about CPS is not true. [0] for an example, see https://www.scchousingauthority.org/section-8-current-participants/housing-choice-voucher-current-participants/subsidy-standards/ https://www.scchousingauthority.org/section-8-current-partic... — note that the 2 occupants per bedroom standard is a national HUD standard (stemming from the 1991 Keating memo, subsequently mandated for adoption as HUD policy by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998.)
gruez 5y ago
>Handwavy nonsense. If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. This is changing the goalposts. It's no longer "Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America" but rather "Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America if they're single parents". Just for kicks you can extend this arbitrarily. Why stop at kids? What about your mom and dad too, for a multigenerational household?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Minimum wage isn't about extending it arbitrarily. By design and intent, it's supposed to be enough to raise a family on one income.
  - username90 5y ago
    Why should minimum wage be enough to raise a family on one income? Why can't people do it together?
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      I don't think the minimum wage is the best solution for the problem, however it must be noted that the families that are the worst off tend to live in places where it is more common to not have a male adult in the household then the reverse. Two incomes to support a family only works if dad sticks around and actively participates in maintaining the household (of course single dad's exist too, but that is dramatically less common).
    - TomVDB 5y ago
      Because there are plenty of circumstances where living together is not possible. What’s wrong with there being a system in place that ensures that everybody, irrespective of having gone through divorce, or death, medical issues etc, has a chance to survive with a roof about their head and some food on the table?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >By design and intent, it's supposed to be enough to raise a family on one income. A lot has changed since when it was first enacted. Most notably, families switched from single earner to dual earner.
yumraj 5y ago
> If an adult with kids is making minimum wage, they need to be able to rent a two-bedroom. No disrespect is intended to anyone, but by definition a person making minimum wage is poor and why can’t they live in a single bedroom apartment or even a studio. Where does it say that minimum wage = every occupant gets their own bedroom? In large parts of the world families share bedrooms. Please note I’m not saying these people should not try to better their lives, but people making minimum wage need to compromise.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  The Tyranny of Meritocracy.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Not sure what you mean but I realized that no matter how I phrase my comment, it has the potential to be misinterpreted. I simply was trying to say that minimum wage has a definition, and I’m assuming that definition is safe housing and sufficient food and other necessities. I’m assuming that it does not mean a certain size of housing, designer clothes, eating out a certain times a week and so on, since after all by definition it is minimum.
thordenmark 5y ago
If an adult with kids is only making minimum wage, they have a lot more problems than rent.
sershe 5y ago
1) No, they don't "need" to be able to rent a 2-bedroom. 2-bedroom is a luxury in most of the world, either because well, it is, or because housing is equity-focused and therefore shitty (case in point is me growing up in the USSR with 2 engineer parents and a sister, in a 700sqft 1-bedroom equivalent). Someone contributing the equivalent of minimum wage is not generally expected to be able to afford luxuries. 2) Having children while on minimum wage is child abuse. Similarly, nobody owes them the right to have children, and nobody should be obliged to pay for such profligate hobbies. Perhaps they should devote the time and resources otherwise spent on child-rearing to create more value for others first.

ben0x539 5y ago

> anyone earning minimum wage wouldn't be in the market for an average-price two-bedroom rental Isn't that what the article is saying?

adventured 5y ago

Further, less than 250,000 people out of 161 million in the US laborforce are actually earning the minimum wage. It's less than one sixth of one percent. If you listened to the propaganda, you'd think it were 20% of the laborforce. Which warrants a few other questions, including how many of those minimum wage workers are living with their parents rent free, what the average age of those workers is, and so on. This study instantly becomes that much more absurd if you actually analyze the minimum wage worker segment. It ends up you're talking about 1/20th of 1% of the laborforce that it reasonably applies to.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
Could you please provide a source for those hard numbers?
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  247,000 people reported making federal minimum wage in 2020 according to BLS data.[1] It's a little less than 1/6% of 161 million. This excludes 865,000 who reported making less. And a probably much larger number making local minimum wages. And any self employed or salaried workers who make minimum wage or less effectively. And anyone making the slightest amount more. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.htm
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Even those numbers are highly misleading since half the states in the US (containing a strong majority of the population) have minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage.
  - gruez 5y ago
    But if they're making below minimum wage, why should we expect a change in minimum wage policy to help these people? Clearly their employers aren't interested in following minimum wage laws.
    - 5y ago

Eridrus 5y ago

I am so tired of these articles. It's easy click-bait, but maybe a news organization and do some reporting on the actual living conditions for minimum wage workers since they're clearly living somewhere.