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> "The report’s Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending mo

> "The report’s Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending more than 30% of their incomes. Fair market rents are estimates of what a person moving today can expect to pay for a modestly priced rental home in a given area. The kind of home that can be rented for the fair market rent is in decent condition, but it is not luxury housing." Basically, unless I am reading the chart wrong (https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_2021.pdf https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_...) the price of a 1 bedroom home is in fact affordable to 50%+ of the population. its kind of like duh, the average house is affordable to the average person, and people below that average (nearly half) would have to spend more than 30% of their income to pay for the average 1br by the very fact they are in the lower tier. they also try to make it sound like 'unaffordable' means they can't ever pay those prices, they could, it would just take more of their take home.

dougmwne 5y ago
I don't think it follows that "the average house is affordable to the average person." A 1br apartment is certainly not the average home. And paying more than 30% of your income on housing might sound like it'll reduce your savings and investments if you are earning a high income where other essential expenses might only take another 20% of your income, but for a low income person, it would mean not being able to afford healthcare, food, transportation. If you can't see the problem, then you don't know much about how the other half lives.
frankbreetz 5y ago
This is a good point, when you take into account two income households, more then half can afford the average apartment. It would make sense that the lowest 10% of paid workers would live in the cheapest 10% of apartments. I wonder how that picture looks.

dougmwne 5y ago

I don't think it follows that "the average house is affordable to the average person." A 1br apartment is certainly not the average home. And paying more than 30% of your income on housing might sound like it'll reduce your savings and investments if you are earning a high income where other essential expenses might only take another 20% of your income, but for a low income person, it would mean not being able to afford healthcare, food, transportation. If you can't see the problem, then you don't know much about how the other half lives.

frankbreetz 5y ago

This is a good point, when you take into account two income households, more then half can afford the average apartment. It would make sense that the lowest 10% of paid workers would live in the cheapest 10% of apartments. I wonder how that picture looks.