Full Time Workers and Housing Affordability

The blog of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies has a great post on how the affordable housing supply is not meeting the needs of many full time workers in many cities. The post has a chart comparing the income needed to afford one bedroom units at Fair Market Rents (FMRs) with median full time wages. Here’s a portion of the chart.

The FMRs used are the ones estimated by HUD for 2015. As many Housing Choice Voucher Program Managers know, HUD FMRs frequently undervalue the true prices of rental markets, so the true difference between wages and the income needed to afford units at FMRs may be greater than this chart suggests.

The full blog post with the full chart can be found here.