Decent housing remains out of reach for many American workers, the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2018 Out of Reach report confirms. As you can see on the map below, there’s not one state where a two-bedroom market-rate rental is possible on 40 hours a week of minimum wage work, even in states with a higher minimum wage than the federal rate of $7.25 an hour.
How much would you have to earn to rent a two-bedroom home? The national rate is $22.10, or $17.90 for a one-bedroom. Arkansas is the cheapest state—a worker would need to make $13.84 an hour to afford a two-bedroom rental there. But the Arkansas minimum wage is just $8.50.
Many renters are being paid more than minimum wage, of course. But the report estimates that the average renter’s hourly wage is $16.88—still below what a single adult would need to afford a one-bedroom apartment. People end up spending far more than they can afford on rent and struggling to pay their other basic expenses.
This is the reality nationally as the Trump administration pushes to cut federal affordable housing funding. Things are bad, and Team Trump only wants to make them worse.