We have been focused on the local housing crisis. The reality is this is not just a Davis problem. In fact, according to a report this week, it is not just a housing problem. The headlines across the nation are that, despite the good economy, a minimum-wage worker cannot afford the rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S.
Take a look at the Washington Post article from Wednesday: “The economy’s booming. Some states have raised minimum wages. But even with recent wage growth for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.”
That means not even in Arkansas, considered to have the cheapest housing in the nation. One needs to earn $13.84 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. Minimum wage in Arkansas is just $8.50 an hour.
Even the vaunted $15 living wage championed by the left would not make a dent in the majority of states.
In Hawaii, it would take $36.13 an hour ($75,000 per year) to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Minimum wage is just $10.10 in Hawaii.
In places like San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Counties, one would need $60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. The average needed in California is $32.68, more than twice the minimum wage. In 
Sacramento, you would have to earn $27 an hour to meet the median rent of $1400 for a two-bedroom. In Davis, it’s closer to $1600 for a two-bedroom.
In San Francisco you would have to work a minimum wage job for 171.5 hours per week just to afford a market rate apartment.
“The housing crisis is growing, especially for the lowest-income workers,” said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “The rents are far out of reach from what the average renter is earning.”
There is a reason why we have said that market rate multi-family housing is not going to be a solution for housing for families. The chief reason has been cost. This just demonstrates just how much the cost of apartments is problematic for families to afford to live in them.
Columnist Erica Smith wrote yesterday for the Bee, “There is nowhere in the United States where someone working a minimum wage job full time can afford to rent a ‘decent’ — read, up to code and not infested with mold and vermin — two-bedroom apartment. You read that right. Nowhere.”
At the same time, a different study came out this week from UCLA economist William Yu of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. The study looks at the disparity in homeless rates across the country and found five factors, including most notably median rent and median home value, which are strongly correlated with more people being unhoused.
“If we can improve the affordability and the availability of the general housing market … I think it will help in reducing the homeless problem,” said Professor Yu.
There are other factors that contribute to the homeless problem. His study, not surprisingly, found that “high percentages of homeless people suffer from mental illness (26%), substance abuse (18%), and domestic violence (24%).”
He concluded, “These individual at-risk factors interacting with the less affordable housing markets cause the rise of homelessness.”
Weather is a factor in the percentage of an unsheltered population. Professor Yu writes: “Hawaii and California have milder winters than Illinois and New York, for example, and we see higher unsheltered homeless rates in the former states. Homeless people are more likely to stay outdoors rather than in a shelter in a mild Los Angeles January than in a bitter New York or Chicago winter.”
But Professor Yu also found that, contrary to popular belief, homeless individuals are not moving to warmer climates from colder climates. Professor Yu found, for example, that 75 percent of L.A. County residents living on the streets had a home there before they lost it, and 65 percent of those unsheltered homeless individuals lived in L.A. County for more than 20 years.
The San Diego Union-Tribune pointed out that those blaming the weather for the rise in the homeless population are missing the mark. The study, they say, “made this argument seem like a lame excuse by politicians who don’t want to admit to their utter failure of leadership in addressing California’s severe housing crisis. UCLA economist William Yu found no evidence in the United States of a direct correlation between the quality of the weather and rates of homelessness. Instead, homelessness in America correlated strongly with housing costs.”
Erica Smith writes that “the higher the housing costs, the higher the rate of homelessness in a state.” Indeed, “What might be less obvious is that the findings also showed that most homeless people aren’t living on the streets because they’re mentally ill or addicted to drugs. They’re homeless because they can’t afford rent.”
She perhaps drew too fine a line there – it appears that mental illness is a factor, but it combines with cost of housing to produce homelessness. That makes intuitive sense. Higher costs of living make people, who are already more vulnerable, even more susceptible to becoming homeless.
Ms. Smith offers a few conclusions about these two studies
First, “[W]e Californians like to think of the housing crisis as our thing. And indeed, it is worse here than most places. But in reality, this is a U.S. thing. Unless you’re about to move to another country, you can’t escape it — and maybe not even then.”
Second, “[W]ith the economy booming and wages remaining stagnant, construction moving at a snail’s pace for all but the most expensive housing units and more Americans renting than they have been in the past 50 years, this situation is only likely to get worse.”
Finally, she notes: “When the average American renter makes $16.88 an hour and has to make $17.90 an hour to rent a decent one-bedroom apartment and $22.10 an hour for a two-bedroom place, that’s not just a crisis. It’s a catastrophe that must be addressed.”
A point she doesn’t make is that, while this is a national problem and a crisis here in California, we have to start addressing the issue locally and regionally. Davis has taken the first steps by providing more in the way of student housing, but more must be done.
We have to keep on top of UC Davis to make sure they follow through with their promises for 9050 beds over the next decade – and that won’t be easy.
But – and this is where I think a lot of people have misconstrued my remarks previously – I viewed student housing as the lowest hanging fruit. The most manageable crisis that we could alleviate. That is not the end of the story.
Student housing is easily defined, plus with students at 65 to 85 percent of all renters, it is the biggest chunk of rental housing here. But what these studies demonstrate, once again, is that market rate multi-family housing is not going to be the solution for family housing.
That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to attempting to solve the family housing problem locally, it means we are going to have to look beyond market rate multi-family housing to do it.
Stay tuned.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Some interesting assumptions in the cited study. First, is the assumption that the one minimum-wage worker is the only person living in the apartment. Second, is the assumption that that only person would need/want a two-bedroom apartment.
One also has to ask why there is no discussion of family size (single, married, married with children, how many children) or number of household incomes.
Goods points Matt, I had similar thoughts. To go with that, how many people actually make minimum wage.
That said, I think this provides us enough to assess the housing situation.
My guess is it gave them a constant baseline by which to assess cost. My thought was simply convert the figure into yearly totals and state, this is how much a family would have to make to afford to live in a two bedroom.
I read the article in the LA Times and the referenced study, which is of course, ridiculous. ” Yu found that the higher the housing costs, the higher the homeless rate”. Which just means the population is increasing. Housed people are moving to California which drives up prices and unhoused people are moving to California which drives up the homeless count.
His whole these is is disproven by his own data for Nevada which has high homelessness and low housing costs. What he does not mention is that Nevada also has high net population inflow of both housed and unhoused people.
So if I have a job at Starbucks in Westwood and I can no longer afford the rent in the area do I?
1)Quit my job and live in a cardboard box
2)Keep my job and commute from further away
3) Move to a lower cost town and work at the Starbucks there
4) You share a housing unit with some other people.
5)Realize that having a job at Starbucks is a starter job for kids living at home or attending college and that a higher paying job is required if wanting to be a real adult.
Doesn’t Starbucks pay well over minimum wage and offer health benefits?
Real self sufficient adult. Ready to “leave the nest”…
BTW happy Fathers’ Day to those that are, and please make sure you honor the women who ‘qualified’ you for that…
Jeff
I realize that low wage “starter jobs” are intended to be for kids living at home. But if you look around in our society, it is not unusual for “starter” positions to be held by an adult or even a senior. These are frequently people whose “adult job” was lost, often through no fault of their own, and cannot be regained because most companies do not want to higher an older worker if they have an equally qualified younger person who they perceive as a “better fit”. Please don’t tell me this doesn’t happen. I was on our hiring team for 10 years. I pushed back against “ageism”, but was not always successful.
> is a starter job for kids living at home or attending college
I “starter job”? Oh, that is SO Twentieth Century . . .
Jim
You ask these questions as though it were always a simple matter of one individual moving. Now ask yourself if it is still so simple if you are the battered wife, mother of two children who must move out for safety, but cannot move more than X miles away because of paternal parental rights. Let’s suppose that you are a full time mother who cannot move because you live near a relative who will care for your children while you are at work, but for whom a move would cost child care expenses in which case you could not afford rent. Having heard hundreds of these stories as a clinician, I know it is not as easy as pick up and move somewhere less expensive.
Tia, You can come up with all sorts of scenarios that are the product of your own imagination if you want to. The reality is that the people in your scenario above have numerous shelters available to them through both homeless and domestic violence programs. The HUD data shows less than 3% of homeless are “unsheltered families”
But how many are families “sheltered” or “unsheltered”?
To answer my own question:
Homeless families comprise roughly 34% of the total U.S. homeless population
Approximately 1.6 million children will experience homelessness over the course of a year. In any given day, researchers estimate that more than 200,000 children have no place to live
So the 3% figure you gave understates the problem by distinguishing between sheltered and unsheltered.
Jim
These are not products of my imagination. They are the stories of real women. Almost all shelters are temporary and have a timeline after which the women must leave. And please explain to me why your scenario of a single adult, is anymore meaningful than my examples? If you are going to use anecdote, then please do not deride me for doing the same.
Yes, we can always find and amplify that tragic stories as a call to action, but we make a mess of things when they are exploited in politics to create a general policy for all. Instead of allowing it to impact general policy, we need targeted programs for people in the tragic stories. And there are many targeted programs and also there are private non-profits. It would be much better if people like you and others of means put their own time and money into those programs and non-profits rather than advocate general policy in the name of the inventory of tragic stories you collect.
Jeff
“ It would be much better if people like you and others of means put their own time and money into those programs and non-profits rather than advocate general policy in the name of the inventory of tragic stories you collect.”
No. It would not be. This is the approach that we have relied upon almost invariably in this country and it clearly is not effective. Those “such as myself” are usually the same people who are donating to charities and participating on boards and commission to address these issues. And it is not enough. I agree this should not be a political football. A rich and compassionate society should agree to meet the basic needs of all of its citizens regardless of whether some are so judgmental as to think that they should get to decide who is worthy of help and who is not. This should not be partisan, it should be universal.
By all means, let us commit, on Fathers’ Day, to completely eschew the concept of “paternal parental rights”. Agree there should be none (yet we should leave their obligations, as to financial support. intact, or enhance).
Have heard there are two rules in life: 1) the woman is always right; and, 2) if she isn’t, see rule 1)… so, Tia is perfectly correct, QED.
A day or two ago, you stated that you’d be presenting a proposal on the Vanguard, later this summer. Wondering who you’re apparently talking to.
By the way, the article focuses almost entirely on an “income crisis” across the entire country – not a “housing crisis”. Insufficient income, even in “build everything” areas.
It has been true for about a generation-and-a-half that a single head of household with any children will have a very hard time making ends meet in most housing markets. All you need to do is reference the MIT Living Wage calculator to see the impact of having a family, and see that the solution in most cases is for there to be two wage-earners in the household. Over several decades now it’s become necessary for any single parent to move in with another person, whether it is in a relationship or with another family member, or just having another roommate to make the expenses pencil out.
http://livingwage.mit.edu/
So in Yolo County a living wage for one person is calculated at $12.77/hour. The housing cost used in that calculation is $10,464 per year. Adjust as needed for Davis, since the MIT calculator is done by county. Have one child? Your necessary living wage jumps to $26.81/hour, partly because your housing cost goes up to $14,100 per year. But two adults sharing a house with one child ‘only’ need a living wage of $14.43/hour.
The solution for most people of my childrens’ generation has been to share housing, delay marriage but cohabit, delay childbearing, and focus on increasing their incomes.
And, staying at home longer, with their parents. Until they establish careers.
Well, one of mine joined the military, which solved several problems.
A variety of multigenerational housing arrangements.
Is that the type of proposal that will (next) arise, in reference to your hints? Seems like you’re trying to build a case for something.
Who are you apparently communicating with, regarding this? And, where would it be?
No. This was just an article based on two studies.
Don,
This is easy to do as a single individual. I have done it many times. Not so easy if you must find someone who will be suitable to live with your two young children as you point out.
“The solution for most people of my childrens’ generation has been to share housing, delay marriage but cohabit, delay childbearing, and focus on increasing their incomes.
My children, like others I know are choosing another solution which if it continues and grows will have profound demographic consequences. They are choosing not to have children. This is not them being selfish. It is them acknowledging that we are living in a time when as you stated a single worker cannot hope to provide a reasonable living standard for their family. They don’t want to make the choice that I did, both parents work full time and hire care for the children.
As a society, we are making choices which will make this look increasingly appealing.
Anyone who has seen this movie (or lived in CA for at least 20 years) knows about the “profound demographic consequences” of high school dropouts, meth users and illegal aliens having ~10x the number of kids as MDs, college professors and engineers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0
This will not work for females (that have a “biological clock”) but my advice to male college grads is to work hard, keep living like a college student and invest as much as you can. By the time you are 40 you should be worth over a million and there will be plenty of hot 30 year old well educated women with well educated parents who want to marry you and have kids.
P.S. Like Matt I think it is funny that the study says : “there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment” I’m guessing that they found too many places where the minimum wage wage worker could rent a modest ONE bedroom, STUDIO apartment or ROOM…
> there will be plenty of hot 30 year old well educated women with well educated parents who want to marry you and have kids.
Cool. And these women will also be completely free of “daddy issues”.
You have very dark brown eyes, right?
I don’t think anyone has a “daddy” who is ten years older than they are and more often than not if you marry a woman who’s actual “daddy” has an advanced degree he will probably be 30+ years older than her and a guy 10 years older than a woman is almost always closer in ager to an “older brother” than a “daddy”.
P.S. It is important to always remember the “half your age + 7” rule for the youngest woman a man can date without being “creepy” (so surprise that a famous old guy with fake orange hair broke that rule when he started dating his current wife)…
““The economy’s booming.”
“even with recent wage growth for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment,”
I am not an economist, not a business entrepreneur. I am going to address this from the point of what I have been and am no longer. Extremely poor.
A booming economy, meaning distant ( from the lives of the poor) markers such as stock market, corporate earnings, the GDP look good globally. But if they do not touch your personal life, they are meaningless. More than 50% of the population are not invested in the stock market. Unless these “booming” numbers translate into increased income for the poor, the working poor and now much of the middle class they have no meaning for the majority.
I use more basic markers. Can a person working full time in the area in which they live earn enough to afford basic housing, food, clothing, medical care,& transportation? Because if that is not the case, then the “booming economy” is just a nice way to say that the rich are further advantaged. The assumption is that the rich will provide more jobs and better pay. But they frequently do not, and currently have no real incentive to do so.
Your position and question here reflect thinking that should lead you to support the policies of the current president.
Because he has the same problem with Wall Street, investors, American big business, foreign owners of production having stolen the American inventions of that production… making all the coin from domestic capital investment while reducing the share that would otherwise go to the American working class.
The economy is booming, but beginning in 1993 when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and then in 1995 when the WTO was formed, the US when from having balanced global trade to a trend that will be a $1 trillion deficit in the next few years.
The trend of American small business starts ironically follows this trade imbalance trend. Both of them have headed into the toilet.
At the same time our idiot politicians and their cheap-labor hungry big business friends have given away the American production store to foreign concerns in return for millions donated to their bank accounts, campaigns and foundations, we have seen an explosion in labor automation technology from the lefty nerds of Silicon Valley, we have also had a flood of millions of poor and uneducated people from the southern border. These things in aggregate have depressed wages and economic opportunity for many that would otherwise find a road to economic self-sufficiency.
That is what the Trump economic plan is attempting to reverse.
But instead of admitting these things, my Trump-hating friends with that opposite world view demand increased minimum wages and rent control. They are also pushing Universal Basic Income. These are basically the “running out of other people’s money” ideas.
This is getting us off topic. Housing. Local issues. Not Trump, not Clinton, not NAFTA.
Not a comment regarding the content of Tia or Jeff’s comments, but the issues that they’re referring to impact income (and relative comparison/affordability of rent, nationwide) – which is really what this article is about. The comparisons made in the article are not entirely local.
So, in that sense, they are on topic.
Past experience shows us that topics get highjacked by injecting national politics into local topics, thus unless the article is specifically on national topics, we have chosen to preclude going there.
Can you suggest a country where a low wage person can afford a 2 bedroom apartment?
> In places like San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Counties, one would need $60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Obviously . . .
OBVIOUSLY.
Obviously, we need to raise the minimum wage in the Bay Area to $60/hour.
The purpose of this was to point out the cost of housing not low wages
Probably should have used a different article, then. (Or, left out the comparison between wages vs. rent across the across the country.)
I know Jeff would like Davis to be more like Paradise…
I just went to the site below and if it is 30% Dem and 40% GOP today an old girlfriend who grew up in Paradise was probably exaggerating when she said she was the only Democrat in town before she moved to Santa Barbara for college and the town was once again 100% GOP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_locations_by_voter_registration
In the 70’s Paradise couldn’t get school bond issues passed @ 50%+1 of votes…
Yeah… clearly we need to keep them (low wage folk) out of Davis, right? Our current City policies do a fair job (pun intended) of that, and we don’t want to change that, right?
Cheese, we need more “crackers”… gotta protect the neighborhoods, right? We want Davis to be “Paradise”… right?
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/paradise-ca/
I’m wondering how many people making minimum wage are looking to rent their own 2 bedroom apartment? Why not show how few people making minimum wage can afford a 4 bedroom ocean view home or a buy a new three row European SUV.
Maybe. But if you have to earm $27 an hour to afford the Sacramento’s $1400 rent (and Davis is a little higher), that would seem a far broader swatch than just minimum wage workers.