The National Coalition for Low Income Housing released its annual report on rental costs yesterday, and the outlook is pretty grim for most families. The average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is just under $1,000 a month, and a family would need to earn about $38,000 a year, or $18 an hour, to be able to comfortably afford it. That's $4 more an hour than they actually make.
It's even worse in markets in the Northeast, where the average one-bedroom apartment is $850 a month (and good luck finding that). Rental conditions have been bad for awhile, of course, but more and more families are looking for rental housing now after the housing crisis. The coalition's president, Sheila Crowley, called on Congress to fund the $1 billion-National Housing Trust Fund, which was created in 2008 but never capitalized. The fund is meant to create and preserve affordable rental housing, with a majority of it reserved for lower-income families, and funding it is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's budget for 2011.
I've hoped before that the housing crisis will lead to a saner, affordable rental policy. All signs seem to show that the federal government wants to create balance between removing barriers to homeownership and providing stable housing for families that can't afford to own. It would also be nice if we could stop moralizing about which type of housing creates a better community. The first and biggest step would be to provide money for the trust fund, but that's still up to lawmakers.
-- Monica Potts
