December 21, 2004
By The News-Press staff and wire
News-Press.
Most Americans who rely on just a full-time job earning the federal minimum wage cannot afford the rent and utilities on a one- or two-bedroom apartment, an advocacy group on low-income housing reported Monday.
For a two-bedroom rental alone, the typical worker must earn at least $15.37 an hour — almost three times the federal minimum wage of $5.15, the National Low Income Housing Coalition said in its annual "Out of Reach" report.
In Lee County, the wage needed to lock down a two-bedroom apartment is lower at $13.60 an hour, less than Lee County's average wage. The needed wage in Collier is slightly higher than the national average, at $16.10.
Those figures assume that a family spends no more than 30 percent of its gross income on rent and utilities — anything more is generally considered unaffordable by the government.
Yet, many poor Americans are paying more than they can afford because wage increases haven't kept up with increases in rent and utilities, said Danilo Pelletiere, the coalition's research director.
The median hourly wage in the United States is about $14, and more than one-quarter of the population earns less than $10 an hour, the report said.
The median income in Lee County is $33,749. The average hourly wage in Lee County was $14.02 in 2002, the most recent data available.
The number of people seeking government assistance for rental housing has been remarkably stable, said Harry Adams, executive director of the Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency, which oversees Section 8 housing assistance.
"We lose as many people as we gain every month," Adams said. "People get out of the program because they are able to find an income to support themselves and people frequently move to other areas."
The broader rental market in Southwest Florida has been hard to read since Hurricane Charley hit Aug. 13, said Jenny Moorhead, rental manager for VIP Realty in Fort Myers.
"Because of the storms, we have had people who have volunteered places for nothing or next to nothing for people who needed a place," Moorhead said.
Now that things are returning to normal, the rental market remains a little slow, she said.
"Interest rates are still so low that people are buying instead of renting if they can," Moorhead said.
Monthly rents in Lee County average about $575 for a studio apartment up to about $989 for a four-bedroom rental, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed hourly wages rising about 2.6 percent during the past year, a slower race than the 2.9 percent rise in rents recorded in the Consumer Price Index.
In addition, Pelletiere said, government spending on Section 8 rental vouchers, which helps 2 million Americans — mainly poor — pay rent, hasn't kept up with demand.
The study analyzed data from the Census Bureau and the Housing and Urban Development Department to derive the hourly wage figures.
In only four of the nation's 3,066 counties could a full-time worker making the federal minimum wage afford a typical one-bedroom apartment, the coalition said. Three were in Illinois: Lawrence, Crawford and Wayne counties; the other was in Washington County, in the Florida Panhandle.
California topped all states in the hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment, at $21.24, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and New York.
States with more residents in rural areas were generally the most affordable, although no state's housing wage was lower than the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour, which has not changed since 1997.
Florida voters approved a $1 increase in the state minimum wage to $6.15. That increase takes effect in May.
West Virginia was the lowest at $9.31 an hour for a two-bedroom rental, followed by North Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.
Pelletiere said the coalition's data for 2004 could not be compared with previous years because of changes in the way that HUD calculated "Fair Market Rents," which is the cost of rent and most utilities for a typical apartment. The fair rent varies widely by metropolitan area.
Overall, though, utility costs appear to be rising at a faster rate than rents, Pelletiere said. Add in stagnant wages and the housing situation for the nation's poor "has gotten worse over the last year," he said.
— The News-Press staff writer Tim Engstrom contributed to this Associated Press report.
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