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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

#71

Post by joeberon »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #43
joeberon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's really low. I just moved to Hamburg as a postdoctoral researcher and our international housing office said to expect to spend around 60% of our salary on rent. Then again rent here includes heating which changes it a little

Don’t compare things like that. 60% of your income is going straight into funding someone else’s investments and you have no choice but to pay. It is a sickness, a malaise of society.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Sure, I don't like landlords as a "profession", but on the other hand it is not unaffordable, which was the point in the article. It is a mistake to conflate whether or not it is morally okay to whether or not it is affordable. Even if it were affordable that doesn't mean that it is okay. Then again, in terms of my own life and living situation, I honestly can say I do not mind renting.

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

#72

Post by mcphage »

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…

So it’s a bad metric, because if you used it to measure your imaginary unrealistic state, it would fail? If you want to argue that it’s a poor choice, argue from something that’s a little closer to reality.

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

#74

Post by ChrisLTD »

zpeti wrote: post #66
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…

The title doesn’t make sense at all to me. If the statement was literally true, what would happen to the millions of minimum wage earners? They literally couldn’t afford rent and would be literally living on the street, or in shelters. And I’m using the word literally literally. You can make a case for some sort of relative poverty where they find hardship in renting which is absolutely true, but this clickbait title…

Perhaps the title is using the colloquial definition of “unaffordable” rather than the literal? Colloquially, “unaffordable” often means it’s hard to pay for something, not that’s it’s impossible to pay for something.

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

#75

Post by dilap »

zpeti wrote: post #66
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…

The title doesn’t make sense at all to me. If the statement was literally true, what would happen to the millions of minimum wage earners? They literally couldn’t afford rent and would be literally living on the street, or in shelters. And I’m using the word literally literally. You can make a case for some sort of relative poverty where they find hardship in renting which is absolutely true, but this clickbait title…

They live with roomates or they live in vehicles. In the bay area there are tons of beat-up old vans and RVs with people living in them all over the place.

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

#76

Post by mmarq »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #41

It’s worrying that people can’t afford their own home. That feeling of security cannot be understated: knowing where you can sleep for the next night. Everyone living in a rented apartment is under constant survival stress, with a subconscious fear of joblessness and eviction.

This is only true in places like the UK or, I understand, the US, where renters do not enjoy the same protection they would in other countries. My brother rents a flat in Germany, he can't be evicted (unless he stops paying rent) and rent increases are pre-determined and tied to inflation (ie, the landlord can't ask for a 5% rent increase each year). In Italy contracts have a minimum 4 year duration, during which rent increases are capped at three quarters of inflation.

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

#77

Post by bojangleslover »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #58
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 no…

>I am an adult with a family

Minimum wage is not meant to support a family

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

#78

Post by ChrisLTD »

nostrebored wrote: post #51
pydry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The point is, these people shouldn’t be broke. After all, they have full-time work.

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

#79

Post by bojangleslover »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #41

It’s worrying that people can’t afford their own home. That feeling of security cannot be understated: knowing where you can sleep for the next night. Everyone living in a rented apartment is under constant survival stress, with a subconscious fear of joblessness and eviction.

Interesting you say that, I'm trying to buy a house right now and that's the big variable I just have accepted I won't know the proper weight of until I do it myself. I've decided to just take the plunge, it's the only way to truly learn.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #58
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 no…

[deleted]
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