Rent Unaffordable for Average Worker in NY

By PATRICK LUCE (Patch Staff)

New Yorkers, particularly those in Long Island, Westchester, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, can’t afford their rent, according to a new study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

While the economy has improved and the unemployment rate has dropped in most states across the country, many people are still struggling to pay the bills, especially when it comes to rental housing, the study shows.

The problem is that while jobs have increased, wages have not, forcing roughly 21 million working Americans to scrape by on a near minimum wage salary, according to the Pew Research Center. At the same time, rents keep rising because the demand for rental units has increased across the country as the home ownership rate has dropped to its lowest point since 1989.

The result is that people are being priced out of the rental market, and it’s worse in New York than most parts of the country, according to The Atlantic’s City Lab.

Most economists advise renters to pay no more than 30 percent of their annual income on housing. Anything more is unaffordable. Nationally, the average worker needs to make $19.35 an hour to afford the rent on an average two-bedroom home, about $4 an hour more than the average renter’s income of $15.16.

The gap is wider in New York, where a renter needs to make $25.67 an hour, compared to the average New York renter’s wage of $22.21. Only Hawaii ($31.61 per hour), the District of Columbia ($28.04), and California ($26.65) were worse.

Rent for downstate residents is even more dismal than the average. In Nassau and Suffolk counties, a renter would have to earn $33.04 per hour to afford rent. The two Long Island counties were in the top 10 most expensive counties and metropolitan areas in the country. Westchester was the third most expensive county with $30.60 per hour. Brooklyn and the Bronx were tied with $28.48.

It gets worse for New Yorkers who only earn the minimum wage of $8.75 per hour. They would have to work 117 hours per week, or 2.9 full time jobs, to be able to afford a two-bedroom unit.

The problem continues to grow as potential homeowners are increasingly priced out of the market, instead turning to rentals, further limiting the rental stock and driving prices higher.

“The tightening rental market has the most significant impact on low income renters,” the report concludes. “Many higher and middle income renters occupy units that are affordable to lower income groups, reducing the supply of affordable and available decent apartments for the lowest income renters. As a result, for every 100 extremely low income (ELI) renter households, there were just 31 affordable and available units.”

Image via NLIHC