Housing Remains "Out of Reach" for Millions of Americans, Says Report

September 8, 2003 -- As housing costs increase faster than wages, decent, modest housing is increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans, a report released today by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) shows.

The national "housing wage" for 2003 is $15.21 an hour, or $31,637 a year — almost three times the federal minimum wage — according to the coalition’s report "Out of Reach: 2003". The housing wage is the amount a person working full-time has to earn to afford a two-bedroom rental unit at fair market rent while paying no more than 30 percent of income in rent.

Tom Lay, the executive director Neighborhood Housing Services Inc. of Boise, an Idaho-based NeighborWorks^® network member, told The Times-News that Boise residents must earn $11.40 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom home. That leaves as many as 28 percent of Idaho renters making less than the housing wage, Lay estimated, and means that minimum-wage workers would have to work about 79 hours a week to pay the rent.

The Out of Reach: 2003 report calculates the housing wage for every state, region and county in the U.S. Other findings include:

• For 2003, housing costs continue to rise faster than wages and the cost of other goods. The housing wage increased by 3.7 percent between 2002 and 2003, while inflation was 2.1 percent. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real median earnings have fallen throughout much of 2002 and 2003.
• The housing wage has increased 37 percent since 1999, when a person had to earn $11.08 an hour to afford fair market rent on a national basis.
• Housing costs are especially acute for families earning wages in the services sector, which continues to represent a fast-growing portion of the national economy. The average income earned by families with extremely low incomes (those at 30percent or below of their area’s median income) is $8.34 an hour, yet there is no state in which an extremely low income household can afford the fair market rent on a two-bedroom home.
• The report also highlights the inadequacy of the federal minimum wage, which has been $5.15 an hour since 1997. Renter households in 40 states — home to almost 90 percent of all renter households in the nation — face a housing wage of more than twice the prevailing minimum wage. Eleven states have housing wages more than three times the minimum wage.

According to Out of Reach: 2003, the least affordable states and their Housing Wages are:

1. Massachusetts $22.40
2. California $21.18
3. New Jersey $19.74
4. New York $18.87
5. Maryland $18.85
6. Connecticut $18.00
7. Hawaii $17.02
8. Alaska $16.75
9. New Hampshire $16.49
10. Colorado $16.29

The least affordable metropolitan statistical areas and their Housing Wages are San Jose, CA ($35.02 an hour); San Francisco, CA ($34.13 an hour); and Stamford-Norwalk, CT ($28.71 an hour).
The states with the largest annual increases in their Housing Wages are:

1. Maryland 12.09%
2. Virginia 9.07%
3. California 7.59%
4. Massachusetts 5.92%
5. Connecticut 5.70%
6. New Jersey 4.73%
7. New Hampshire 4.57%
8. Arizona 3.52%
9. Minnesota 3.52%
10. New York 3.48%

To View the Entire Report and Contact Information:

The complete report, including data for every jurisdiction in the country, is available at www.nlihc.org/oor2003/. Contact information for state and local groups releasing Out of Reach is available at www.nlihc.org/states/index.htm.

back to top