Posted on April 22, 2010 by GISELLE ROUTHIER This week the National Low Income Housing Coalition released its yearly report, Out of Reach 2010. The report presents a stunning picture of how truly unaffordable New York is to low-income families–a trend that is also pervasive across the country. The data analysis shows that in the New York Metropolitan area, a household must make an hourly wage of $26.13 in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent (FMR). This amounts to a yearly salary of $54,360–a number that is way beyond the reality for low-income families. In fact, the report calculates the yearly income for Extremely Low Income families to be $19,464, according to standards set by HUD. Following these numbers, it is therefore not suprising that nationwide, 71% of low income renter households spent more than half of their income on rent. Another interesting tidbit mentioned in the summary of the report states that from 2001 to 2007, nationwide high-rent rental housing stock increased by 94.3% while affordable rental housing stock decreased by 6.3%. Nowhere is this more obvious in New York City where we now are forced to look at dozens of near empty luxury buildings at a time of record homelessness. Overall, this report is not good news (albeit not surprising news) for the record homeless population in New York City, but we hope the presence of data in this stark form will help illustrate the dire situation. Read the whole report here.
