How Much You Have To Earn To Afford A Two-Bedroom Home In Different States, Mapped
According to federal standards, anyone who pays more than 30% of their gross income on housing is considered rent burdened. According to people who live in areas with expensive housing, it's nearly impossible not to be rent burdened. The rent is too damn high, as a wise man once said, and wages simply haven't kept up with housing costs.
How bad is the state of housing affordability in America? Well, take a look at the following map from the National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual report on the gap between wages and rent. The coalition calculated how much you'd have to earn as an hourly wage, working full time without any vacation or sick days, to be able to afford the Fair Market Rent (a calculation by HUD that's approximately the 40th percentile of rents in a given area):
Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. You may notice that you cannot afford a two-bedroom rental home on the federal minimum wage in any state. In fact, even in the very cheapest state for real estate, West Virginia, you have to earn $14.10 an hour — about $29,300 per year.
The federal poverty line for a family of four is $25,100. Again, this is less than what it takes to be able to afford a two-bedroom home in any of the 50 states. You'd have to earn 117% of the poverty line to afford a home barely big enough for four people in West Virginia.
In short, poor people can't afford to live anywhere without sacrificing their other basic needs, and our federal standards for poverty and aid are hopelessly outdated.
Check out an interactive version of the map and NLIHC's full report for more information on the housing affordability crisis.