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Amrit Dhillon  (202) 662-1530 x222
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NLIHC Releases 2005 Housing Affordability Report

As evacuees search for housing ahead of FEMA deadlines, study shows families must earn $15.78/hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment

Washington, DC (December 13, 2005) - - Today, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released Out of Reach 2005, its annual report calculating the hourly wage that someone must earn - working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year - to be able to afford rent and utilities in the private local housing market in every state, metropolitan area and county in the country.

This year’s national Housing Wage is $15.78 an hour, up from $15.37 an hour in 2004. This is more than three times the federal minimum wage, further highlighting the difference between what people earn and what people are expected to pay for housing in the United States.

With FEMA’s hotel/motel subsidy program for hurricane evacuees scheduled to end sometime within the next several weeks, the report highlights the difficulties displaced families, along with millions of other low income families, face in their search for safe housing that they can afford.

?The disparity between what people earn and what even modest rental housing costs grows larger each year,? said Sheila Crowley, President of NLIHC.  ?This is the housing market in which millions of low wage workers and elderly or disabled people must try to find safe and decent homes. Now tens of thousands of displaced people from the Gulf Coast have joined them in this competition for scarce housing that they can afford. And FEMA wonders why evacuees are still in hotels.?

With a housing-related fuel and utilities increase of more than 13% in the last year responsible for much of the increase in renter housing costs, the situation is grim.  For the first time, NLIHC’s data shows that a full-time worker at minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in country, further illustrating the dire situation that denies many a right to adequate housing.

Out of Reach 2005 calculates the number of full-time wage earners a household needs in order to afford the Fair Market Rent in any area of the country.  Nationally, a family with two full-time workers earning federal minimum wage would make just $21,424, significantly less than the $32,822 annually they would need to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.

The full, interactive report can be found at http://www.nlihc.org/oor2005/.

Additional facts and findings from Out of Reach 2005:

  • The vast majority of American renter families (81%) live in counties where a two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent is unaffordable to a family with two full-time minimum wage earners.
  • Nine in ten renter households live in counties where the average renter wage (what renters actually earn) ? $12.22 nationally ? is insufficient to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent.
  • The ten most expensive states for renters (with their Housing Wages) are:
      • Hawaii    $22.30
      California   $22.09
      Massachusetts   $21.88
      New Jersey   $20.87
      New York   $19.73
      Maryland   $19.62
      Connecticut   $19.30
      Rhode Island   $18.42
      New Hampshire  $17.58
      Alaska    $17.40
  • San Francisco is the nation’s most expensive city for renters
 
Background

The Housing Wage is based on the Fair Market Rent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s best estimate of what a household seeking a modest rental unit can expect to pay in the local private market for rent and utilities.  The report uses the federal affordability standard of spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs.

According to the most recent American Community Survey, roughly 12 million households earn less than $10,712 a year, the equivalent of what an individual would earn working at the federal minimum wage 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

The data in Out of Reach 2005 does not take into account the effects Hurricane Katrina and Rita have had on the national rental housing market.
 

Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, the National Low Income Housing Coalition is a membership organization dedicated solely to ending America's affordable housing crisis. NLIHC educates, organizes, and advocates to ensure decent, affordable housing, within healthy neighborhoods, for everyone.

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