Posted on 03/26/2014 2:29:14 AM PDT by Libloather
Even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour may not be enough to allow low-wage workers to afford rent in Seattle, according to a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The group says a full-time worker in the Seattle-Bellevue metro area needs to earn $21.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the so-called housing wage that the group calculates. In Washington state, the housing wage is $18.65 per hour.
The group estimated that the worker spends no more than 30 percent of his or her income on rent and utilities. For the price of a two-bedroom apartment in Seattle, the group used $1,123 per month, the fair-market rent estimated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
(Excerpt) Read more at kplu.org ...
Yes, because too many people want to live in too little space. If you want to live in Seattle, you dang well better have a competitive income - and that’s not anyone else’s responsibility. Can’t afford it? Move.
so does that mean two workers sharing an apartment need
$10.80 an hour?
Or improve his skill set so he could get a better job. As I get older I have noticed that most people that are poor stay that way because they continue doing what poor people do. Most rich people stay rich because they continue to do what rich people do.
Raise it, and all prices go up, so they will need to raise it again, and prices will go up again, etc.
Liberals always demand a strengthening of their failed laws, which leads to more failure, leading them to demand a strengthening of their laws .....
Remember, it is Seattle........ Land lords /rent is trifling compared to barrista’s and $12 a cup coffee
Then to top it all, by raising the minimum wage, the poor are buoyed up into an income level where they lose their Obamacare subsidy.
They ‘re doomed....... no solution
ACORN Economics 101. It’s the law of demand and demand.
Yet another lovely example that the problem isn’t wages, but production and inflation of the money supply...and will be ignored by the idiotic masses.
You’re not supposed to think on it when someone declares a need, remember?
Please please please make this happen. Seattle needs to implement this new minimum wage immediately. The only question remaining is whether those newly unemployed because of this new wage floor will be able to collect unemployment benefits based upon the new wage or their old one.
So, if he gets two roommates, he only needs $7.20 an hour. By my calcs, he’s got spending money left over!
Lord forbid that they lose that $6000 yearly EITC check.
Deal!
At 50$/Hr. I could retire and learn whether the Mayor and his liberal friends are capable of pulling the wagon!
IOW, setting a minimum wage at the federal level doesn’t making any intercoursing sense. If Washington state thinks that everyone should be paid over $21 an hour as a state minimum wage just because the cost of living in Seattle is so high, let them just STFU and pass it.
End federal minimum wage laws NOW.
Thanks Libloather.
/bingo
And one day, the government, after pretending they’ve done nothing for god knows how long, declares housing a right and takes steps to federalize it so as to provide it to everyone...and thus gaining more control over one’s private life. Who’s going to question big brother if he can kick you out of your home and prevent you from getting another?
It’s that gun someone has to their head that forces them to live there. The gun also forces them to not go through the steps of finding a house to buy.
Yep....it’s always the same story. Some socialist liberal comes along and says all this stuff should be free to the people blah blah blah....it all goes downhill from there. Initiative, hard work, innovation and self-dependency all go out the window. It ALWAYS fails.
Because it's never enough.
When the big employers flee the city rents will go down.
This is a consequence of zoning and land use. Seattle has done very little in improving transportation, besides wasteful goobermint trains, and has extreme land use restrictions. Naturally housing is expensive.
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