they also exaggerate by omission the number of people earning these wages, their ages, and the income of other family members.
the housing cost problem is wholly created by government and instead of working to fix it too many cities keep doubling down on making it harder to create new housing, affordable or not. combine the housing cost with the high costs of government services, licensing fees, and other regulatory fees, and the lower class is further in the hole.
one issue is there is no reason for politicians to fix this issue, it is too hot button to have a true remedy and worse is a fantastic source of income for patrons and relatives through various special interest groups which exist to absorb funding from programs supposedly working to solve the issue. instead end up raising legal challenges in exchange for pay outs either in direct settlement or advisement roles all of which end up pushing costs of solutions too high to implement.
Seattle only recently upzoned many areas of the city to permit building denser housing however they may end up sabotaging it through rent controls which have been shown to be another method of limiting new housing