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Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

money.yahoo.com

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Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#51

Post by nostrebored »

pydry wrote: post #46
thunderbird120 wrote: post #23

This is the actual source of the article[1]. The methodology does not support the claim the title makes. >LendingTree used U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau data to determine whether owning or renting a home is affordable to a person working a full-time minimum wage job. Assuming a person could afford to spend up to 30% of their gross monthly income on housing, LendingTree calculated how much in monthly…

>This study assumes you must spend less than 30% of your income on housing As long as I can remember a reasonable budget has been assumed to be 1/3 on housing, 1/3 on living expenses and 1/3 on savings. I never really saw that as unreasonable. Are there people who think it's reasonable for an average household budget to be 40% living expenses and 60% housing?

An average household budget doesn't have a single earner. When you're broke, you have roommates. In more expensive places, until you find a partner to live with you often have roommates.

This isn't a bad thing.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#52

Post by shalmanese »

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23863899

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27841355

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852220

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27850918

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852875

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20225313

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23854403

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#53

Post by nostrebored »

reilly3000 wrote: post #50
bombcar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That shows modest two bedroom but is still a much better dataset than the one originally posted. Interestingly enough around here they’re advertising double to almost triple the legal minimum for entry-level service jobs such as McDonalds or gas station clerk and apparently are not having many takers.

Sorry I pulled a quote from an article that referenced that link, but in retrospect that landing page wasn’t citing my claim very well. The full report on page 17 shows hours needed to work per week to afford a 1BD apartment at minimum wage. The 93% number came from a prior year. > No local minimum wages are sufficient to afford a one-bedroom rental home at the Fair Market Rent with a 40 hour work week. https://nlihc…

Even their infographic doesn't align. You can see plenty of shades for the 40hr workweek. Note that they don't break down the state by state summary for 1BR.

I personally know people living alone in low minimum wage major cities who defy this suggestion. Sure, not always in glamorous places. But I'm willing to bet across most of the east coast of the US you'll find counterexamples.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#54

Post by refurb »

They compared minimum wage to median rent.

Why? Of course someone making the legal minimum wage can’t afford the median rent.

Median rent in SF is $2,600 [1]. That’s a pretty nice 1-bedroom in a nice part of town.

You can find single rooms to rent for less than half that. That would seem like a better benchmark than the median?

This analysis was intentionally sandbagged.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#55

Post by glassconclusion »

leppr wrote: post #18
mandmandam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage is absolutely a problem. Maybe not "the" problem, but it's a massive and highly solvable problem which only the profoundly ignorant could possible believe has no effect on low earners ability to rent a roof over their head. > People move up from those starter jobs, they don't stay there forever. Please explain to me how that's different from a serf paying off their ownership debt, or a slave winning his…

Why would there not be a market for housing people with low wages? There are markets for cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap entertainment, ... Everything except lodging. There's a hiccup somewhere in the "free market" of many countries that prevents it from providing cheap housing, even though there's clearly a huge business opportunity.

Maybe there is a bare minimum on comfort what people are willing to accept? I lived in Asia for a while. There were some many options. From a 3m2 room (if you wanted to sit, you had to open the door and sit on your bed) to a full mansion. I'm back in a major capital in Europe and there is pretty much nothing you can rent under 1000EUR (70-80% of minimum wage)

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#56

Post by tazjin »

pydry wrote: post #46
thunderbird120 wrote: post #23

This is the actual source of the article[1]. The methodology does not support the claim the title makes. >LendingTree used U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau data to determine whether owning or renting a home is affordable to a person working a full-time minimum wage job. Assuming a person could afford to spend up to 30% of their gross monthly income on housing, LendingTree calculated how much in monthly…

>This study assumes you must spend less than 30% of your income on housing As long as I can remember a reasonable budget has been assumed to be 1/3 on housing, 1/3 on living expenses and 1/3 on savings. I never really saw that as unreasonable. Are there people who think it's reasonable for an average household budget to be 40% living expenses and 60% housing?

The 1/3 figure is from a different time. For people who don't have tech (or equivalent) income I think it's frequently closer to 50%, of course depending a lot on location, too.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#58

Post by bryanrasmussen »

thunderbird120 wrote: post #23

This is the actual source of the article[1]. The methodology does not support the claim the title makes. >LendingTree used U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau data to determine whether owning or renting a home is affordable to a person working a full-time minimum wage job. Assuming a person could afford to spend up to 30% of their gross monthly income on housing, LendingTree calculated how much in monthly…

>They also are not arbitrarily constrained to follow good budgeting guidelines which specify not more than 30% of income to housing.

poor people are not arbitrarily constrained to spend only 30% of their income for housing? Well that's true I guess, but I mean there's a reason why 30% is assumed as being good budgeting practice.

>the arrangement which I very comfortably made it through grad school in is apparently not possible.

yes, I think the arrangement I made it through on grad school would not be possible now that I am adult with a family. but sure if the conditions that held true for me then, age, no dependents, stayed true for all my life I could live as a poor person and only be a little bit desperate at times.

hey, did you ever like have a bad patch in grad school but think it's ok this is only for a few more years?

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#59

Post by kortilla »

reilly3000 wrote: post #33
bombcar wrote: post #28

> They calculated how much in monthly housing costs a person working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year at the minimum wage hourly rate in their state could afford. They then compared that to the median monthly homeowner and rent costs derived from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey. This … signifies nothing? Take a hypothetical state that consists of three people and three houses, one rented by…

https://reports.nlihc.org/oor Yep, it’s still not affordable in 93% of US counties for full time minimum wage workers to afford a modest 1BD apartment. Full time work even at minimum wage can be hard to get in many places, where employers like Walmart deliberately schedule workers less than full time to avoid paying benefits.

> where employers like Walmart deliberately schedule workers less than full time to avoid paying benefits.

Your meme is at least 5 years out of date.

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