Out of Reach

The National Low Income Housing Coalition once again must report that the cost of rental housing in the United States is out of reach of the vast majority of low wage earners and people who are elderly or disabled with public income benefits. The disparity between income and rent for people of modest means is so wide as to be unfathomable to the two-thirds of the U.S. population who are well-housed at costs that are well within their households’ budgets.

For the other one third of the nation, the consequences of ends that do not meet are all too real. They must devise ways of coping that at a minimum mean forgoing all optional or postponeable spending or saving, too often require making impossible choices among necessities, and in the worst case, managing with no home at all.

For those who labor under the misconception that this third of the U.S. population lives somewhere other than their community, Out of Reach is a reminder that no community, no town or city or county or state, has enough housing for the low income people who live there.

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Once again, this year there is not a single jurisdiction in the country where a person working full time earning the prevailing minimum wage can afford a two bedroom rental home.

Moreover, there are only four counties in the country - Wayne, Crawford, and Lawrence counties in Illinois and Washington County, Florida - where a person or a household working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at the prevailing minimum wage can afford even a one bedroom apartment.