By Mike Benbow
Herald Writer
It’s getting tougher and tougher for renters to afford the roof over their heads, especially in Snohomish County.
That’s the report from an advocacy group’s analysis of government statistics, which showed that a worker or family in the county must earn $16.25 per hour, or $33,800 a year, to afford even a modest two-bedroom apartment.
By comparison, the average U.S. worker must earn at least $13.87 an hour, or $28,850 annually, to afford a similar apartment, according to the annual "Out of Reach" report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which was released Tuesday.
The study is based on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s determinations of fair market rents in 3,779 states, metropolitan areas and counties or New England towns.
The coalition established a "housing wage" for each jurisdiction by calculating the earnings a person would need to pay no more than 30 percent of income for rent, widely viewed as low for most markets.
The housing wage here is less than the nation’s $16.97-an-hour median paycheck in 2000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But it is far more than the minimum wage, set by state law at $6.72 an hour for residents of Washington.
Minimum wage earners in the county must work 97 hours per week (without overtime pay) to afford a two-bedroom unit, according to the Washington Low Income Housing Network.
"Low-wage workers in Snohomish County are faced with an impossible task when they search for decent, affordable housing," said Ed Petersen of the county’s Housing Hope, a nonprofit agency. "The report shows the need for increased housing assistance to minimum wage workers and those with even lower incomes."
There were 72,470 renters in the county in 2000, according to census data.
The report noted that 44 percent of renters in Washington state paid more than 30 percent of their incomes for rent.
The 30 percent figure is what HUD considers an affordable level because those who spend more generally don’t have enough for other necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.
Almost a third of American households pay more, a recent report by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found.
The income needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Washington state grew by nearly 11 percent during the past year, according to the advocacy group.
Individuals or families must earn a housing wage of $29,117 annually, or about $14 an hour, to afford the state’s average two-bedroom apartment, the report noted.
The coalition analysis concluded that the gap between a minimum-wage salary and the cost of housing is widening almost everywhere. The Washington-based advocacy group issued the report to challenge the idea that the minimum wage is adequate to cover living expenses.
Washington ranked as the 14th most expensive state in the nation for housing costs.
Average two-bedroom apartments were most expensive in California and the mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast, while those in Puerto Rico and much of the South were cheapest, the report showed.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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