Making tradeoffs to afford housing
'You’re picking between clothes, food, shelter, and childcare'
PSRC’s new Regional Housing Needs Assessment(External link) finds that a household needs to earn about $30 per hour—more than double the minimum wage—to afford a median priced apartment.
The incomes of many residents are not keeping up.
Across the region, most lower- and moderate-income renters—households with less than $50,000 annual income—spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing. This disproportionately includes American Indian, Black, and Latinx households who are more likely to be cost-burdened than white households.
A household is considered cost-burdened if it pays more than 30% in housing expenses and severely cost-burdened if it pays more than 50%.
Read more at https://www.psrc.org/whats-happening/blog/making-tradeoffs-afford-housing(External link)