NLIHC released a Spanish edition of its report Out of Reach 2019 (Fuera de Alcance 2019) on July 22. This year’s edition is the 30th anniversary edition of Out of Reach, which documents the significant growing gap between renters’ wages and the cost of rental housing throughout the U.S.
The report’s national Housing Wage - the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing - is $22.96 for a modest two-bedroom rental home and $18.65 for a one-bedroom rental home. Out of Reach/Fuera de Alcance provides the Housing Wage for every state, metro area, county, and metro-area ZIP code in the U.S.
The report shows that a full-time worker with a standard 40-hour work week earning the federal or prevailing state minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent in any U.S. county and can afford a one-bedroom rental in fewer than 99% of counties (28 out of more than 3,000 counties) nationwide. On average, a worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour must work 127 hours every week (3 full-time jobs) to afford a modest two-bedroom rental home ($1,194/month) or 103 hours every week (2.5 full-time jobs) to afford a one-bedroom rental home ($970/month).
Fuera de Alcance 2019 is available at: reports.nlihc.org/oor