What you’d need to make in every county in the US to afford a decent one-bedroom

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/22/what-youd-need-to-make-in-every-county-in-america-to-afford-a-decent-one-bedroom/

by Libertatea • 12 years ago

62 52 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

dm24• 12 years ago

This PDF is what the map is based on and has some additional data: http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2014OOR.pdf

Also: http://nlihc.org/oor/2014

saraid2163• 12 years ago

While that is good to have, a glance through the PDF actually says this data is different.

Namely, the PDF indicates 2-bedroom whereas the WaPo article indicates 1-bedroom. I should probably do a number-comparison on a per-county basis to see if the WaPo writers simply made a mistake, but I'm feeling pretty lazy.

dm24• 12 years ago

They probably just downloaded the states individually (http://nlihc.org/oor/2014/NY) to get the 1 bedroom numbers.

wdmeldon• 12 years ago

I avergaged the 1-bedroom numbers for all of the counties in Rhode Island (guess why I picked Rhode Island) and got ~$15.00, which is ~$3.00 less than the 2-bedroom on the PDF. So they probably calculated it correctly.

Two bedrooms are always surprisingly close in price to one bedrooms.

adolph2• 12 years ago

Here is the Washington Post's datasource: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/county...

dm24• 12 years ago

That's the data used to generate the map, I was linking to where they got those numbers from.

plorg• 12 years ago

County-level data is available on a per-state basis from the NLIHC website. I went and downloaded all of the state data spreadsheets and merged them into one big spreadsheet. It took maybe 20 lines of python.

Here it is, for anyone interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/40bg2um044vy82f/2014-OOR-ALL.xls

nutjob123• 12 years ago

I don't see manhattan in the list. Average here is around 2500 for a 1br, I thought that was high.

rayiner• 12 years ago

Manhattan is New York County, $23.37.

flanbiscuit• 12 years ago

Brooklyn is the same however I'd like to see this broken down further by neighborhoods of Brooklyn (or all boroughs) because prices can vary significantly by neighborhood

reboog7112• 12 years ago

Manhattan isn't a county. Look for New York County. It is $23.27

thyroxo2• 12 years ago

Hmmm, I'm not sure if I'm understanding the methodology... am I missing something?

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the 1-bedroom rent+utilities cost (or FMR) is $750 for Schenectady County, NY. [1]

At minimum wage, and 40 hours each week, you make $7.25404 = $1160 each month.

How is $1160 < $750?

[1] http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2014_code/...

lutorm• 12 years ago

Presumably it's based on the fact that you can "afford" to live there if you don't spend more than x % of your income on housing, where x < 100.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

They are assuming that you spend 30% of your income on housing, leaving you money for food, transportation, taxes, etc.

thyroxo2• 12 years ago

I wonder if that assumption is fair. Also, do you know where it says that in the article?

c0g• 12 years ago

Allowing for food, transport, etc?

abshack• 12 years ago

$750/$1160 is ~64%. The common definition for affordable rent is ~30% of monthly wage[1] (based on some quick google-fu).

[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/special-topics/files/...

mhurron• 12 years ago

The lower your income, the higher percentage of it will go to housing unless you are prepared to live in a dank, urine-soaked hellhole.

Avshalom• 12 years ago

actually you make about 960 after federal withholding, oasdi and a couple other things (mandatory longterm disability at 4.50 a month)

so food, transport, clothes, cleaning supplies, laundromat, insurance etc. would have to fit into ~200 a month.

njharman• 12 years ago

What's up with expensive counties in north central N. Dakota?

danielweber5• 12 years ago

Natural gas boom.

Pardon the expression.

amckenna• 12 years ago

From the article: "A dark swathe of North Dakota that appears to cover the geography of the oil and gas boom stands out as well."

falcolas• 12 years ago

Oil boom. All the various workers are making triple digit salaries, and like any good boom, people offering food and housing are adjusting their prices upwards to match.

tnorthcutt• 12 years ago

I'm guessing it's areas where demand is high, but supply is low, due to increased oil & gas activity.

theorique• 12 years ago

Fracking and oil.

protomyth• 12 years ago

Would probably be a bit higher if some of the oil companies didn't buy local hotels.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

When I hear words like "decent" I check for my wallet. When I was at a start-up making very below-average wages (in the Boston area, in fact), I lived in a very below-average place.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

But you would not want to send your children to school in a very below average school ... which may or may not be the point.

tthomas48• 12 years ago

It just means that they don't include buildings that are falling apart, nor do they include penthouse flats. Texas and Louisiana both have lots of dark purple and have the very worst public schools in the nation. It's really just a pretty good indication of where the jobs are.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

Nearly by definition, someone has to go to very below average schools, and someone has to live in the very below average housing.

The first situation is more scary than the second, of course. Being young and single and in good health with no kids it was fine living below average.

adregan• 12 years ago

Yes, but you had the expectation that things would get better (and I'm assuming you had the skills to make much more).

My friends who aren't involved in the tech industry have quite a long row to hoe when it comes to making more money. I had a friend (who loves cooking and is accomplished in restaurant work) struggle to find anything above $13-15 an hour in NYC (and that's hard work at a busy restaurant), and it doesn't often get better than that.

For some, living in below average accommodations isn't a necessary stop along the way but the destination, and that stinks.

qq66• 12 years ago

50% of people live in below-average accommodations.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

Your first paragraph is something important, but not what I was talking about, and not related to the rest of your comment.

First, as long as money has any meaning, people with more of it are going to live better than people with less of it. Maybe it would be more fair if all young people lived below average and all older people lived above average, but it's a huge reconstruction of society.

Second, NYC is the fifth most expensive city in the world[1]. I presume your friend is there because he's getting something besides money for his work -- adulation of customers, or a chance to make it really big.

Or, it's a deliberate consumption choice. He wants to live in walking distance of Broadway and great restaurants. Well, that's a choice in how he spends his money. I could live in a mansion in my city and complain about how expensive it is, but I shouldn't expect any sympathy because I choose to live someplace expensive. I could deliberately have 8 kids and then complain about how much times my kids require, or I could be a Olympic gymnast and complain about how much training I have to do, or I could keep a cluster of 40 PCs in my living room to play 40 simultaneous WoW games and then complain about how much it all costs.

There's nothing magical about consumption choices because they go into "housing" versus "free time" or "computers" or "nights at the opera." If someone was renting the most expensive cars in the US and complaining about how he can't afford something, the answer would be very similar to another person who was renting the most expensive real estate in the US.

Living on top of Mount Everest is expensive, even if you were born there.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/internationalproperty/10... NYC is the most expensive in the US. Of course rankings change over time.

dustcoin• 12 years ago

Agreed. It isn't surprising that a minimum wage worker would have trouble affording 40th percentile housing (the basis for the pricing data).

SlipperySlope• 12 years ago

Texas, where I live, is notable in the map for the diversity of costs, in particular the frequent juxtaposition of the highest and lowest cost counties.

The rich live in cities, and landlords set rents according to the ability to pay.

robbs• 12 years ago

The wage data that drives the document is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/county...

adolph2• 12 years ago

I think this is an excellent example of a bad chart. The premise seems to be an illustration the geographical differences in income needed to obtain housing. However, the arbitrary coloring choices makes a $13 county (example Dallas County, TX) look the same as a $20 county (example LA Country, CA). The difference $7/hour is almost the same as the minimum wage in Dallas--that's a significant amount that the map disguises.

Speaking of minimum wages, what's up with the five Washington and 3 Oregon counties with minimum wages above the "what you's need to make" mark?

Columbia County Pend Oreille County Stevens County Wahkiakum County Lincoln County Harney County Morrow County Wheeler County

saraid2163• 12 years ago

The difference $7/hour is almost the same as the minimum wage in Dallas--that's a significant amount that the map disguises.

Agreed, but I'm not sure that makes it a bad chart. To me, one of the things the chart is saying is that 1BDR housing wages outside of the $10-13 range are uninteresting.

If this is something they checked and know to be true, then deliberately zooming in on that range is useful, because it highlights that variance. If they're hiding relevant information by ignoring things outside of that range, then it's a problem.

I mean, it's a choropleth. That already starts edging into "bad chart" territory.

philwelch• 12 years ago

Low cost-of-living counties in states with high minimum wages meant for city dwellers, most likely. The cost of living difference between Seattle and eastern Washington is immense, but guess which one the state sets minimum wage based on.

superbaconman• 12 years ago

My dad just bought a down town storefront with a killer apt above for 25k. I can't believe that telecommuting programmers aren't owning small towns all throughout America.

rybosome• 12 years ago

There's a lot more that goes into enjoying one's surroundings than just the price paid to own a home there. For those who enjoy small towns, you're absolutely right; what an amazing opportunity.

nextw33k• 12 years ago

Is it an Americanism to use the word every in this fashion?

I looked at the title and wondered why you would want the sum total of all the housing costs. I would rather know what each county's costs are. Clicking on the link it is each, however given the prestige of the website made me wonder if this is another subtle example of British verses American usage?

randallsquared• 12 years ago

As an American, it does seem like a slightly ambiguous or odd usage.

What you’d need to make in every county in the US to afford a decent one-bedroom

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