Out of Reach Report – 2020

The National Low Income Housing Coalition just released their annual Out of Reach report, which documents the significant gap between renters’ wages and the cost of rental housing across the United States. The report’s central statistic, the Housing Wage, is an estimate of the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home at HUD’s fair market rent (FMR) without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing costs, the accepted standard of affordability. The report found that in Wisconsin, a resident earning minimum wage would have to work 77 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom rental home at FMR, a statistic that highlights the immense need for more affordable housing. The full report and state-specific information can be found here: https://reports.nlihc.org/oor