Data For That Sense of Being Gouged: D.C. Has the Second Highest Rents in the Country
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is out with its annual survey of rental affordability in the states, and the news is not good: The District of Columbia is the most expensive in the nation, second only to Hawaii (and then you're paying to live in, well, Hawaii). To measure affordability, the organization uses the Housing Wage, which is the amount you'd have to earn per hour to be able to spend no more than 30 percent of your income on rent. In D.C., that number is $28.73, up about four bucks from last year.
Now, this might not be as bad as it seems. Since the NLIHC ranks state-by-state, most of the other numbers are averaged over urban and rural areas; a ranking of cities might look slightly different. And D.C. also has the third-highest minimum wage in the country, tied with Connecticut and behind Washington and Oregon. But it does dovetail with what the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute has been saying about poverty and housing availability in the District, so we can't write it off, either.
OK, only good news for the rest of the day!
1:56 pm
Would be nice if this area had some real affordable housing. Especially for government employees.
3:47 pm
I'm currently preparing my house for rental and have been pleasantly surprised by how much (in theory) I can rent my house for. Also, I am perhaps likely to get Section 8 renters, who don't worry about rental costs so much. I am wondering if Section 8's actually drive up local rents...