Housing Everywhere Unaffordable at Minimum Wage

by Leigh Graham · 2009-07-26 10:57:00 UTC
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UPDATE 7/29/09: This conversation on minimum wage continues here.

Minimum Wage Rates Nationwide

On Friday, the new federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour took effect.  Yet:

...in no state can an individual working full-time at the minimum wage afford a two-bedroom apartment for his or her family. In fact, there is no county in the U.S. where even a one-bedroom unit at the FMR is affordable to someone working fulltime at the minimum wage.

According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition's annual Out of Reach report on housing affordability in the U.S.,

A household must earn the equivalent of $37,105 in annual income to afford the national average two-bedroom [fair market rate] of $928 per month.14 Assuming full-time, year-round employment, this translates into a national Housing Wage of $17.84 in 2009.

So $17.84 per hour just for housing versus $7.25 an hour for all a household's economic needs.  I wonder what "fiscal" conservatives have to say about this?

No surprise here: "fiscal" conservatives gripe about the impact on small businesses having to lay off low-wage workers.  I have to ask: are those same conservatives promoting policies for more affordable housing, universal healthcare, high quality education and widely accessible, safe childcare to relieve their and their workers' economic burden?  Certainly justifying such an exceedingly low wage as $7.25 an hour requires demanding a strong, durable government safety net to reduce the joint burden of employers and employees of high rates of turnover, absenteeism and work disruptions due to inadequate healthcare, childcare, and accessible, affordable housing proximate to work?  Don't you think?

The minimum wage increase impacts more than 4M workers in a labor force of 129M.  Certainly we can begrudge the lowest paid among us this modestly beneficial raise.

Above map on mininum wage differentials around the US from Stateline.org.

Leigh Graham
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