Rural News
Jennifer Emerling / There Is More Work To Be Done
Jennifer Emerling / There Is More Work To Be Done
Out of Reach 2014 Released
March 24, 2014
The National Low-Income Housing Coalition released its annual Out of Reach report today. This report calculates the Housing Wage, the wage a person would have to earn to afford a two-bedroom, market-rate apartment, for each state and all metropolitan areas. The report also includes an average housing wage for rural communities in each state and in the country as a whole.
According to Out or Reach, there is not a state in the country in which a minimum wage worker can afford to rent a one- or two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent. For the country as a whole, the 2014 two-bedroom Housing Wage is $18.92, more than double the federal minimum wage. This problem extends to nonmetropolitan communities as well, where the mean living wage for nonmetropolitan America is $13.24, which exceed the nonmetropolitan renter wage ($10.24) by $3.00.
