The Gap Between the Cost of Housing and the Wages of Workers in 8 U.S. Cities

Looking at national housing data collected in the 2016 State of the Nation's Housing report, Elizabeth La Jeunesse finds that "for every 100 very low-income renters (those earning up to 50 percent of area median income) only 57 rental units were affordable and available."

That's just one way of looking at the big gap between the available housing supply and the means Americans have to afford it, "due in part to a lack of low-rent units, and is compounded by the fact that many existing low-rent units are occupied by higher-income households," writes La Jeunesse.  To further illustrate this point, La Jeunesse breaks down the rental market in the cities of San Francisco, New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, each with its own one-bedroom fair market rent (FMR) as well as its own level of income needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment at FMR.

The comparison reveals that it's not just very low income renters that are encountering the housing gap, it's also emergency medical technicians, cashiers, truck drivers, and many more.

For example, according to 2015 HUD estimates, the fair-market rent (including utilities) for a modest one-bedroom apartment was as much as $1,635 in San Francisco, and over $1,200 in New York and Washington, DC. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that in these markets, most full-time cashiers, retail and sales persons, and food preparation workers would have been unable to afford even a modest one-bedroom apartment, under the standard assumption that they should spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

This kind of framing for the housing crisis, concentrating on the types of workers that can't afford to live in specific cities, gained the spotlight again in the weeks since La Jeunesse published this analysis. Attorney Kate Downing famously announced her resignation as a member of the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission, inspiring lots of responses and commentary. One of the talking points from the resignation letter: the inability of teachers, first responders, and service workers (as well as attorneys and software engineers) to afford that city.