THIS MAP SHOWS THE HOURLY WAGE YOU’D NEED TO AFFORD A 2-BEDROOM RENTAL IN EVERY STATE

[Uncle Joe]

The government calculates poverty, inflation, and benefits on the assumption that renters spend 30 percent of their income on housing. If you rent in America, there’s a good chance you’re spending much more than 30 percent of your income on rent.

The map above shows the hourly wage a full-time worker would need to make in order to afford to rent a 2-bedroom unit in every state.

Hawaii tops the list for the most expensive place to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. To make rent in Hawaii, your hourly wages would have to be $31.61. Washington D.C. came in a close second at $28.04 an hour. Surprisingly, a 2-bedroom in California is now more expensive to rent than one in New York.

(snip)


These numbers come from Out Of Reach, a program from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition that has focused on the problem of rent affordability since 1989. If you want to look at it another way, the map below shows how many hours you’d need to work per week at the federal minimum wage to make rent in each state.




http://www.playboy.com/articles/hourly-wage-you-need-to-afford-a-2-bedroom-map?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=social_pd_+evoc&utm_campaign=+evoc_fb

[geek tragedy]

1. That number gets cut in half if they get a roommate. nt

[Uncle Joe]

3. That might help in some cases unless you were single and had a child. n/t

[JackInGreen]

4. Should that be our financial future?

the only housing available is rooming with others because....why?

[geek tragedy]

5. It's not the only kind available.

I've never had my own 2br apartment. Very few people do, because it doesn't make economic sense for a single person to rent a 2br instead of a 1br. It's also inefficient.

[JackInGreen]

8. Not a single person here

bit traditional at home (sometimes). Wife, 2 cats, 15 year old teenage garbage disposal on legs.
I know your point is pertinent for the single individual, but it's kinda reeeaaallly not for anyone not in that position.

[geek tragedy]

9. Couples, unless they're in a 1950's tv show, also require

only 1br (I speak from experience). Throw a kid into the mix and it's still two incomes for two bedrooms.

Which is of course little solace to households with only one income. But, the reality is that the market for 2brs is set by households with two incomes--that's who's renting them for the most part.

[Hekate]

49. The associated costs for "a kid" are enormous, when you factor in daycare

Childcare ends up eating up most of a mother's income.

[JDPriestly]

15. I suppose I never had my own apartment either. That's because I married

at what is now considered to be an early age.

But as a couple, we only had to share an apartment with strangers when we lived in London. We never had to do that in the US.

But I know of seniors who have to share an apartment in order to survive in Los Angeles.

Having your own housing is part of being middle class. Having to share housing is something that I associate with living in a Communist or third world country.

It is not something that should be part of the American way of life. It should not be necessary for a working person to share housing with someone they are not related to in America.

That's 19th century stuff when people lived in boarding houses.

Only very poor Americans did that say in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. And they usually were not working 40 hours a week.

This is why Bernie points out that the middle class is being destroyed.

[geek tragedy]

16. People have roommates when they're young and single, and then transition

to living with an intimate partner.

Most single people don't need two bedrooms.

[Hekate]

51. Oh my. I really like my books, and they multiply in the dark. There's the bare basics...

...and then there's what makes life comfortable and comforting. Consider food: sure you can eat tasteless slop and maintain life and health, but a spice cabinet and imagination go far toward making food a pleasure.

[hfojvt]

50. I always thought

that that was part of being a socialist

that people would be able to live together, share things, instead of being so individualist and isolationist.

[AZ Progressive]

55. Lets be honest, some of us like privacy n/t

[JDPriestly]

58. I guess you were wrong.

Actually, I'm not a socialist at all, so you need to ask someone who is.

Bernie is a Democratic Socialist. They do not believe in owning all property communally as I understand it.

I traveled in Eastern Europe before 1988.

Walmart is more Communist than Bernie is. Walmart dominates the market with huge stores and chooses a very limited variety of stock. Walmart is more like what I saw in Communist Eastern Europe than was Burlington under Bernie.

Certain costs and decisions are best made by the voters, by the community. Others are not.

Sweden has a democratic socialist system and lots of very prosperous, wealthy citizens.

Same for a number of other European countries.

Don't be embarrassed. A lot of Americans are uninformed about this.

[hfojvt]

61. actually I have an advanced degree in economics

so I know a little about socialism. But thanks for talking down to me anyway.

One thing we studied in the class was - there are a whole bunch of varying definitions of the word.

I do believe, however, that to be able to live together and to cooperate was/is a huge part of it.

Living individualistically has always seemed stupid and wasteful to me. Why should 4 people have 4 TVs and 4 cars, when 4 people can watch the same TV show and when a car spends so much of its time being parked. Why pay for four houses, when you can pool your resources and get a quad plex and share consumer goods?

Especially living as a single person is way too much work, and expense. Logically I do everything around this house, and also logically it is about as much work to shop for one person as it is for two and to cook for one person as it is for two. Things like utilities - trash, water, sewer, electric, those expenses would NOT double or triple if I added one or two more people to this house. I also happen to live in a house that has room (easily) for one more person.

I just don't think it is a horrible thing for people to live together.

[artislife]

74. You know what I really came to understand during the whole marriage equality?

That married people are rewarded in this society. There is little thought for the single people. Listen to all politicians, Bernie included, they talk about families. Families.

When I was losing everything and I thought I may have to try to find a shelter, you know what I found? There are tons of places for men. There were 2 places, with about 6 beds each for women without children. I don't have a drug or alchohol problem. There was almost nothing for me. Thank god for friends.

So when you say, people should be able to live together, it sounds little like...you haven't signed a contract with someone, you don't deserve your own piece of peace in this world.

Maybe that isn't what you are saying, and I dream of lots of tiny homes on land with a large building that houses a full kitchen, common area, laundry and bathtubs for all the people who want to grow gardens, share time and skills but don't want to live in each others space 24/7--so I get the communal living. But those villages are few and far between and even more outside the reach of someone making 20 dollars or less an hour.

Oh, I live in the basement apartment of a house. I am lucky to have found it. So yeah, I live with a stranger, luckily she is gold.

[Human101948]

78. I've been places where twenty orthirty people watch the same TV...

and buses carry twice their listed capacity. It's not so bad.

[hfojvt]

79. that sounds pretty bad

but I was riding an early morning train in Deutschland and the car filled up with kids, standing room only. Made me realize that we have a mass transit system in this country, in the form of school buses. Only the adult population cannot use them. But yeah, in the dorm we had a TV pit and a communal kitchen, and we could share a newspaper too (among other things).

[MillennialDem]

33. Yes, but it's not like a 1br is half the price of a 2br. Nor is every available apartment or house a

1br. Sometimes it would make more economic sense to rent a 2br (closer to work, etc).

[geek tragedy]

35. The 1br/ minimum wage info they show is more relevant nt

[Uncle Joe]

60. The vast majority of rental homes or for that matter for sale homes are 2 bedrooms or more,

making up 84% of all residential structures in the U.S.

https://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cqc/cqc9.pdf

[cali]

34. There are many single parents

[CBGLuthier]

26. Why stop there. Stack em up 10 to a room and rent is quite affordable.

Fuck them for not being born rich.

[geek tragedy]

27. Does everyone here live in 6 bedroom mansions?

1 bedroom per person is not slumming, it's the ideal distribution. I have never lived in a household with more bedrooms than people.

Single people don't need two bedrooms. The second bedroom for a single person is a luxury (provided they don't have a kid).

The second chart showing the relationship between the minimum wage and 1br rents is much more useful.

[Warren Stupidity]

76. Indeed, the problem is zoning regulations

as any republican.

[hfojvt]

48. I don't know why people are so obsessed with RENT

Working people need to BUY homes rather than fund landlords.

I pay about $75 a month for my two bedroom house.

[GummyBearz]

64. There is a reason

Until you save up that down payment (which is pretty damn big in states like California), even married 2 income 0 kids people have to rent. And high rent eats up what they can save. It took me and my wife quite a long time to get the down payment together. We live moderately... and sky high rent really hurt the ability to save. We were renting a 1 bedroom 900 sq. ft. place before, with 2 incomes (and mine is a high income). We just bought a decent 2 bedroom 1300 sq. ft. place 5 months ago, but we should have been able to buy it years ago. We are 34 and have been out of college since our mid 20s....

[hfojvt]

66. that only applies to some places

granted, those are places where a whole lot of people live.

It does sometimes boggle my mind how people are ever able to afford EITHER the rent or the home prices in places like LA, NYC, Miami, Baltimore, Seattle, etc., etc.

This map, however, covers the whole country and acts like living is all about rent.

For myself, all alone, I sorta quit renting in 1992 at the age of 30. Although even before that I bought a mobile home in the country at age 25 and saved about $3,000 in rent by living there for a year. That almost paid for the land itself (which cost $5,000) and 22 years later I sold the land for $22,000.

Yeah, if the home is expensive enough and the down payment small enough then your interest,insurance,taxes, and mortgage insurance can almost be as bad as rent.

I am also not sure what is happening to my niece's house now that she is getting divorced.

[GummyBearz]

68. You nailed it

I only speak for my experience as a long time renter and new time owner in southern California. In LA, rent is a huge part of every non-owners pay check.

When we finally bought a place, I paid a 25% down payment, and even with that very large percentage paid down, the monthly mortgage bill is $900 more than our rent. It was actually hard to know if we could swing that. I did a lot of spreadsheet analysis to make sure we were not screwing ourselves over, and my wife finally went along with it. After about half a year everything seems to be working out the way the spreadsheet costs predicted. And at least now I am paying for something I can resell in the future, instead of just putting that monthly bill into someone else's back pocket.

Sorry if I went on a personal tangent there, I still feel very strongly high rent is a major problem for every new college graduate who doesn't have rich parents that will give them a down payment in cash. At student loan debt into the mix and it multiplies the issue. That is why so many college graduate millennials are living in mom and dad's basement until they are 30.

[KentuckyWoman]

84. I will never own again.

We bought in a decent area and through no fault of my own the investor class turned it into a shithole. We managed to get out at a loss before getting gang shot. Move back to small town eastern Kentucky on family land.

Now we've left that and are renting in Lexington so hubby can be closer to chemo.

If the place turns shithole I can easily pack up and move. It's worth the cost to let someone else deal with the headaches and gain some freedom to move.

I no longer trust the powers that be..... at all.

[DFW]

2. I can imagine why the average NY apartment might be cheaper

They are old and tiny in NYC. My daughter lives there. Her apartment IS old and tiny. On the other hand, it IS right in he middle of New York City, and she doesn't want to live anyplace else in the world.

[geek tragedy]

7. NYC also has rent stabilization. nt

[Proserpina]

6. I'm not at all surprised. Thank you for the info, Uncle Joe

$12/ hour my foot!

[SunSeeker]

10. You could put a roof over your head on $12/hr in Arkansas; you'd be homeless in CA.

That is the problem with a uniform national minimum wage. It merely sets a floor, and is usually geared toward the areas with the lowest cost of living. But the minimum wage for LA, NY, SF and Honolulu should be twice what it is in small towns in Arkansas, since the cost of living is twice as much.

[Proserpina]

11. But we aren't in Arkansas, not even Hillary is in Arkansas

and as for the poor souls who are, they would probably like to be somewhere else, if they could afford it.

[SunSeeker]

12. I am sure some folks from Arkansas would take issue with your post.

An electrician friend of mine moved to Arkansas because he was offered work on a large project over there and houses were so cheap he could buy one with the cash he had in savings. A 4 bedroom 2 bath house cost only $45,000. What he didn't realize is that he'd also be paid less. A lot less. He told me people expected him to work for only $10! He now lives in Nevada.

[TIME TO PANIC]

18. Anyone who works 40 hours a week should be able to live with dignity.

$12 an hour doesn't cut it, no matter where you live in this country. We are the richest nation in history, there is plenty to go around. I know, maybe you don't like the idea of more bodies in the lineup spoiling your session SunSeeker.

[SunSeeker]

36. I just said you'd be homeless in CA on $12. We need a much higher min. wage in places like LA, NY.

I don't want more "bodies in the lineup"? That is a pretty sick personal insult, and shows lack of reading comprehension.

The problem is we couldn't get enough Dems, let alone any GOP, to agree to a national minimum wage that would be enough for places like LA, SF, NY or HI. Like a few interior red states, $12 is enough to scape by in Arkansas if you are single and rent a small (not 2 but 1 bdrm or studio) apartment. That is why it is tough to argue for a $15 national minimum wage in places like that.

[TIME TO PANIC]

40. You're right, the problem is we can't get enough Dems, let alone Repugs to agree,

on a reasonable increase. That is why we need to support progressive candidates. I know, thanks to gerrymandering, that's a problem in the short term, but we've had a moderate in the White House for seven years and the republicans still obstruct. I think it's time we elect a someone who will fight for the poor and working class, even if they can't get everything that we want accomplished. Electing an establishment candidate means at least eight more years of a crumb here and a crumb there for the many who are struggling. The quality of life for the poor and middle class has continued to plummet. $12 keeps the American dream out of reach for most, no matter where they live. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate that productivity has it would be near $22 an hour. This country has more wealth than any nation in history. Greed is the only reason any American worker lives in poverty.
My apologies for the comment about not wanting more bodies in the lineup. I'm landlocked and pissed I can't surf.

[Waldorf]

45. What a condescending post. You actually think people are living there against their

free will? It's a beautiful State. Ever seen the Ozarks?

[2naSalit]

13. this is assuming you can even find a job...

I live in a 54 state... and I live in a two room shack with little to no insulation, but my utilities are included since it would cost as much as my rent to heat the place otherwise.

[longship]

14. Note that no state's statistics allow a person to have a two bedroom flat working 40 hrs.

That is a huge problem. Especially since many companies get away with not paying for benefits because nobody works 40 hours a week. This is the way it is in retail.
You are basically fucked.

[PowerToThePeople]

17. The rent is too damn high.

But, I think urban centers and other high rent areas probably skew the numbers a bit.

I rent a fairly large house for $4.25/hour based on a 40 hour work week. Sure, I do not live in the best neighbourhood, but it is a decent place to live.

[Cassiopeia]

22. So, you need to make $14.25/hr

to make housing 30% of your gross income.

Not the best neighborhood, but decent.

That's a right everyone should have. Those of us demanding a $15/hr min wage just want to live with our housing only running 30% of our gross. For far too many, we have housing taking up 60% or more of our income.

$15 an hour minimum wage!

Bernie 2016

[PowerToThePeople]

24. Mine is more than 30%

but under 50%. I would like to live cheaper, but the downsize needed for a rent drop would be unacceptable to me. If I were single and without child a studio apt would do me fine.

[Cassiopeia]

19. $15/hr is the bottom.

America can NOT AFFORD a $12/hr compromise.

[yuiyoshida]

20. Wouldn't you know it...

Hawaii and then California as the highest. I kinda figured that it would be that way.

[TIME TO PANIC]

21. Thank you for this post!

Many here are oblivious to the hardships that millions of Americans face.

[davidthegnome]

23. Hmm.

I live in northern Maine - I can tell you that a lot of people get by on far less than than 16.71 an hour. Heck, I don't even know many college grads up here that make that much, unless they're more than ten years into their careers. Minimum wage in my state is 7.50 an hour, what most of my neighbors would consider "good pay" is around 9.50 - 10 an hour.

Doing some simple calculations... a decent apartment, a vehicle that gets you around... 400 dollars a week at ten dollars an hour. After taxes, I'm not entirely sure what that comes to, but if I remember correctly, from a time when I had a full time job that paid 9.50, it should be around 12-1300 somewhere. So monthly...

Rent: 500
Car Payment + insurance: Conservatively...at least 250
Gas/Heating oil: (Depending on where you live, and the season, guessing the average based on my experience...) At least 200 (if you pay the heating separately).
Electricity: Conservatively... a minimum of 45-50.
Food: Conservatively... 250-300 dollars (eating a lot of ramen, spaghettios, and microwave dinners)
There goes your income

There will of course, be other random expenses. Cars will need repairing, some people like to have phones, or cell phones, or the internet. Some people will want cable. Trash removal, snow removal, cleaning supplies, basic odds and ends...

Yeah, it would not be fun at all on 10 an hour. I'm sure someone could cut those numbers down with a cheaper apartment, using less (or no) heating oil, buying the cheapest food, not using electricity, maybe not having a car (tough up here, unless you live really close to work).

I've lived on my own - and with a room mate (former fiance). We never made enough to get by without help from both our parents - she had a 4 year degree - and I had a GED. Still, even with full time jobs, we needed help to get by. Add children into the mix (we were young, foolish - and poor, and we did..) and things get a lot more complicated still.

Fifteen an hour would be great, but that would be double our current minimum wage, I suspect it isn't going to happen any time in the near future. 16.71 for the majority... just isn't going to happen. I know people working full time who earn less than a thousand dollars a month.

This is why I'm voting for Bernie. Maybe we can't do everything at once, but we need to start making some progress - and I think he has the right ideas - I believe he can get us moving in the direction of prosperity. A higher minimum wage, free vocational school or community college... these things would be an immense help for millions of us.

16.71 an hour... and people wonder why so many over 30 live with their parents? Those kinds of wages just aren't common here.

[NCTraveler]

25. Numbers are way off in Florida.

I currently have over fifty two bedrooms with tenants in them that are close to four hundred less that what this article is claiming. I have many three bedroom houses renting for what they are saying can only get you into a two. Really fishy math they have going. The 1/3 rule in the industry has never included additional expenses. Really wildly inaccurate numbers.

I'm talking about on of the most popular areas to live in Florida and not apartments.

[FLPanhandle]

32. Agree.

My rentals here in Florida are much less than the article is showing (granted this is in the cheaper Florida panhandle).

[cwydro]

28. Interesting.

The minimum hourly wage doesn't even come close.

[pengu]

29. $15/hr is not good enough

$12/hr is a total joke.

[hobbit709]

30. Here in Austin rents are approaching SF levels.

I know someone who moved out of her 2 BR apt when the rent went up to $2200/mo a year ago. Now they're asking $3000 for the same place.
At $10/hr 40hrs/wk you are living under a bridge or sharing a 3 person dwelling with 5 people.
There was an ad recently for a ROOM for $750/mo without kitchen privileges.

[Texasgal]

38. I was just going to say that!

The map is way off.

[oberliner]

31. This is from Playboy magazine?

Odd choice of source for this information.

Not sure about some of their calculations.

[Uncle Joe]

37. The numbers are from Out of Reach.

These numbers come from Out Of Reach, a program from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition that has focused on the problem of rent affordability since 1989. If you want to look at it another way, the map below shows how many hours you’d need to work per week at the federal minimum wage to make rent in each state.

[Octafish]

39. Thank you, Uncle Joe!

The reality is, the jobs needed aren't there.

It's like there are "Two Americas," one that can afford the price of living and one that can't.

The "can't affords" are getting hosed by the well-paid hirelings of Wall Street-on-the-Potomac.



Detroit, once home to the highest standard of living in the nation, now is the example of what the rest of the nation has to look forward to:

The Have-Mores and the Have-Nothings.

[yeoman6987]

52. I just can't believe Detroit fell like that

One of the best places that was completely liberal government and multicultural population. Probably the biggest Shame in America. I hope it comes back better then ever.

[Rex]

56. The city was run like a corporation, political affilation had little to do with it.

And just like a bad corporation, it was left to be destroyed by the very wealthy that fucked it up. Shame really that wealthy people cannot help themselves enough unless something is ruined, even a huge city with millions of citizens.

[Kingofalldems]

69. Why do you always attack liberals?

And yet went to the trouble of endorsing liberal Bernie Sanders in an OP:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251417437

Something is not right with this picture.

[Rex]

41. Well this won't bother those that love the status quo. Nothing bothers them.

They will follow the tea party off a cliff as long as they get theirs.

[csziggy]

42. Back in the 1970s I rented a two bedroom apartment for $125 a month

Of course, minimum wage was $1.65 an hour so I couldn't afford to keep it. I traded places with a couple of guys I knew who were sharing a one bedroom place for $65 a month.

Then college students or low wage workers could rent three bedroom houses for $150 a month and split the costs among three people. Many of those places would be considered slums today - but the rent would now be $700-1000 a month.

[Lizzie Poppet]

43. The Oregon figure is crazy low if you live in Portland.

A lot of housing in the state is quite affordable. But not in Portland. A dozen years or so ago, the city started getting "discovered," and the population influx has been insane. Rent inflation here is bad enough that the (generally useless) mayor declared an emergency. Neighborhoods that were once crammed with artists and oddballs, the very people that created what was worth "discovering" in the first place, have been forced out by gentrification and replaced by smug, overpaid assclowns who try to turn Portland into the same sort of generic, soulless mess they moved away from. I love this city dearly, but the last decade or so have seen a lot of really shitty, unwanted change.

[PeteSelman]

44. Well wages are stagnant and driven down because cheap labor is so readily available.

Building a wall and throwing 11 million people out of the country might not be a great or possible idea. However, putting heavy fines on businesses that hire undocumented workers would go a long way toward alleviating this problem.

The rent is only so high when you're not making enough money to pay it. it's only a bitch when you can't go anywhere wage wise. We need to address the root cause of this problem, illegal hiring.

[lumberjack_jeff]

46. Immigration is unregulated because it's good for capital.

Good for labor? Not so much.

Capital wants unlimited labor to keep it cheap, and landlords want more competition for their rentals from those who can't afford (due to their low wages) to buy homes of their own.

[PeteSelman]

53. Agreed. It must be addressed.

But no one truly wants to do it. The Reoublicans want the labor and the Democrats want the votes.

The rest of us get screwed.

[lumberjack_jeff]

54. Yup. "Merry Christmas" indeed. n/t

[bigwillq]

47. Not a shocker in CT

Everything is so expensive. Beautiful state, but so darn expensive.

[Bonx]

57. Cost of living in Va wayyy too varied for $21.10 to be meaningful

Too high for many rural and economically depressed areas.
You can buy a multiple bedroom house in Danville, right in the city, a couple blocks from the river for $30K.

[bhikkhu]

62. Same in Oregon

Though I can mostly speak of housing prices - its not hard to buy a house under 100k in my area, and then the mortgage is reasonably affordable. I pay $700/month for my 3 bedroom house. But I have heard that even locally rent prices have gone up much faster than home prices...

[doc03]

59. Those figures could very greatly within the states, for example in Ohio the rent

in Columbus would be far higher than in Steubenville.

[whatthehey]

63. All these studies skew market realities by using the 40th percentile price

Who should live in the other 39.9999% of rental homes if this is what you need to "afford" a place?

[Igel]

65. Screwy numbers.

I'm in Texas.

It might be a nice average, combining lesser-quality units and some really tony units. Or perhaps it focuses on a sample that's not quite random. But at 16.60/hr I come up with about $800 for rent.

I've seen a lot of places for a less than that. Even two-bedroom apts.

Those who have trouble affording those apts., esp. two bedroom apts., are going to be, on average, below the poverty line. Esp. if they have kids.

One of the big problems with a lot of heart-wrenching poverty stories is that they only include earned income, and government support isn't earned. (Then in comparing the US with other OECD countries, in the fine print you find that government support is included in most other OECD income figures.) One funny news story I read in the last couple of years looked not at income among the bottom quintile but at expenses. A large proportion of families had expenses that far outstripped their income--not debt, not obligations, but actual $ spent on actual goods and services. The brain dead reporter speculated that it was the "underground economy". That might have been some of it, but in the income figures there was no tax credits, WIC, help with housing, etc., etc.

[whatthehey]

70. Those would be the below 40th percentile homes I mentioned.

I think the implication is that the low wage workers are supposed to be horrified on behalf of are too good to live in the kind of places I did when I made that much or even a bit more.

[Reter]

67. I make $18.75 in NY

I usually work about 50 hours a week, so I get overtime. I have a 2 bedroom house and it's just me and my cat. I do fine. Then again, I don't live above my means.

[Old Union Guy]

71. A bit misleading to average the entire state.

Especially in states dominated by one big city.

[oberliner]

72. Why would one person need a two-bedroom apartment?

Seems weird to use that as the baseline.

[Uncle Joe]

81. 84% of all residential structures in the U.S. are two bedrooms or more, not to mention

many single people have one child or more.

https://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cqc/cqc9.pdf

[oberliner]

82. There are 30+ million adults in the US who are single with no children and live alone

That's about triple the number of single parents who live with their child or children.

Also your census data is over 25 years old.

[Uncle Joe]

83. That leaves 10 million adults with children and the numbers of two bedroom+ residences

still greatly exceed 1 or no bedrooms.

This more recent survey of 2011 reflect that the % of 2+ bedroom residences is a little more than 86% of all residences in the U.S.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/publications/AHS_NumberOfBedrooms.pdf

Taking your figure of 25% adults with children that still leaves a shortage.

[Snobblevitch]

73. I have not read through the entire thread.

The problem I have with these kinds of stories is the oversimplification and assumptions made. A two bedroom apartment in a metro area will cost multiple times what the same housing unit will cost in a rural area. Averaging and using the median do not account for all of the factors involved.

The news organizations are intent on creating news and thus, profits.

[Warren Stupidity]

75. And we have DU'ers steadfastly opposed to 15. nt.

[newblewtoo]

77. Playboy?

I haven't seen an article from Playboy since I was, well, never mind. Someone pointed out that graphics like this sell so here is another one from a less provocative source to google and oggle over. I know a buck doen't go very far here in NH even though we have no sales or income tax but real estate taxes are a killer and cause inflated rental prices.

[link:https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484|

[Uncle Joe]

80. The numbers in the OP come from Out Of Reach.

These numbers come from Out Of Reach, a program from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition that has focused on the problem of rent affordability since 1989. If you want to look at it another way, the map below shows how many hours you’d need to work per week at the federal minimum wage to make rent in each state.