Living in a major American city is the Catch-22 to end all Catch-22s. You have to move there to get a job. Your job barely pays your insanely high rent. Your rent is high because your city has all the jobs. It’s an unbreakable, unending, vicious cycle of bullshit that preys on the middle class because they can, and fuck you, that’s why.
For rent and utilities to be considered “affordable,” they must take up no more than 30% of a household’s income. Unfortunately, that standard seems to have become a thing of the past. According to an analysis by Zillow, the median rent (sans utilities) is over 30% of the gross household income in 90 cities. NINETY. Nine-Zero. And it’s not just your typical high-rent cities, either, though trust me, it sucks to live in one of those as well.
Just take a look at this handy-dandy chart:
In order to live in Los Angeles, the rent-gouging capital of the world, you may have to pay, on average, almost 50% of your income in rent. However, if you take a look at their historical rent percentage, people are only spending 35.6% more on rent than the historical average.
If you take a look at New York, on the other hand, rents have deviated a whopping 67.2% from the historical average. This can probably be attested to skyrocketing rents in new “hot” neighborhoods like Bushwick, Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, areas which were once considered to be “bad neighborhoods” now have higher rents than hot areas in Manhattan. Thanks a lot, Lena Dunham.
According to a Harvard study, nationally, half of all renters are spending over 30% of their income on rent, up from 38% of renters in 2000. According to Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan, this is “the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has ever known.”
Add to that your student loans, credit card bills, cell phone payments and various other debts, and you can kiss that pontoon boat of your dreams goodbye.
[via New York Times]
Rent has gone up about 10% every year in Chicago since I lived here. I moved out of my last apartment because they were going to raise the rent *again* despite no improvements on the place and not having to look for a new tenant. It was just under $300 more than it was on the original lease.
No thank you
I’m not even in the city and over half my salary goes to rent (and parking) PGP
I live in a 3br in one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods you mentioned and I’ve had my rent raised twice in the three years I’ve been here. At this point if it’s raised again (and it will be, already planning to move when my lease is up) I’ll be paying roughly the same as an equivalent apt in lower Manhattan.
I’m surprised it’s only been twice in three years. My cousin got priced out of Bushwick a couple years ago.
That’s why I live in Queens, thank you very much.
The Twin Cities makes us sacrifice half our soul in the winter in exchange for cheap rent
I live on my boat in Fort Lauderdale. Rent goes up, I sail out… All of the benefits of living in a trailer without having to tell people that you live in a trailer.
Uhh… do I need to give a lesson on supply and demand? All of our stupid generation wants to move to big cities for more of the “culture” factor than more practical reasons. More people means more housing demand and more labor supply. That means lower wages and higher rent. Have fun being poor in your trendy city.
Some of us also had to move to a big city (ATL) because that is where the jobs are.
Yeah Id rather be in my hometown central Florida but Atlanta has all the jobs.
Me too, rural SC for some reason isn’t killing it in the job market.