A renter needs to earn more than $27 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Seattle without being cost-burdened, meaning they are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
Each year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) crunches the numbers to determine how much it costs to afford housing in every county in the United States, based on data from the U.S. Department of Urban Development.
In Washington, someone would need to earn $21.69 per hour, on average, to afford rents, making Washington the 10th most expensive state for housing in the country.
“We’ve been doing this for 26 years,” said coalition Executive Director Sheila Crowley. “The basic news is that it gets worse every year.”
But in King and Snohomish counties, the increase this year was staggering. In 2014, it would have cost someone $21.60 an hour to afford an apartment. This year, the number increased by 26 percent, reflecting the growing cost of housing in the region.
Housing prices are a significant factor in the causes of homelessness. According to a 2012 Journal of Urban Affairs study, a $100 increase in median rent in metropolitan areas correlates to a 15 percent increase in homelessness. In January, volunteers working with the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness found 3,123 people living outdoors early in the morning of the annual One Night Count, the highest figure in the count’s history.
Other counties in Washington are more affordable, including Pierce County where the wage necessary to afford a two-bedroom apartment is $21.02, a 9 percent increase over the 2014 study. In Spokane County, the figure is $14.87, a 5 percent increase over the 2014 study.
But nowhere in the country does the cost of housing match with the minimum wage. Even in the most affordable regions, a person earning a minimum wage — which varies in different states, counties and cities — cannot get a two-bedroom apartment without being rent burdened.
Such places as Seattle, New York and San Francisco have some of the highest housing prices, creating the largest gaps between what people earn and what they need to afford the rent.
“It isn’t just in those places where there’s an affordable housing crisis,” Crowley said. “No matter where you go, you’re going to see there’s a mismatch between housing costs and what people earn.”
Ferry, Lincoln and Wahkiakum counties are the most affordable places to live in Washington, but even there, someone must earn $12.37 per hour, which is higher than the state minimum wage of $9.47 per hour.
The data were not surprising to local affordable housing advocates.
“While it was shocking how big that increase was, it quantified what everyone’s been feeling,” said Rachael Myers, executive director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. “The growth and development we’ve been seeing in this city is not creating homes that are affordable.”
Crowley said to reverse the trend, the United States must make huge changes to its economy, including increasing the minimum wage, increasing the number of federal housing vouchers and spending more to create affordable housing.
The current movement to increase local, state and federal minimum wages could make a difference. The Seattle City Council voted in 2014 to set a city minimum wage that will gradually increase each year and set a $15-per-hour wage for all workers by 2021. Larger employers will have to pay $15 per hour as early as 2017. But that rate still pales in comparison to the $27 per hour people need to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
The NLIHCsupports the United for Homes Campaign, which calls for changes to mortgage interest deductions in federal taxes. The campaign would reduce the size of mortgage eligible for a tax break to $500,000 converting the deduction to a 15 percent non-refundable tax credit. The proposal could create $230 billion in revenue over 10 years that would be used to fund the National Housing Trust Fund to create more affordable housing.
“There’s no boutique fix to this,” Crowley said. “This is a national problem with a structural base that requires a reprioritizing of how we spend our money.”