San Francisco has been recognized as the city with the most expensive rental housing in the United States: For an American family to rent a two-bedroom apartment, its income must be at least $68.33 per hour. That’s three times higher than the national average of $24.9. That’s according to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an organization dedicated to issues related to housing affordability.
In their report, the authors assumed that the average renter earns income by working at least 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
Other California cities also ranked among the top 10 communities with the most expensive rents. In second place was San Jose ($58.67), with Santa Cruz ($58.10) in third place. The California cities of Oakland, Santa Maria (along with Santa Barbara), Santa Ana and San Diego are also in the top 10. Rounding out the top 10 is the state’s largest city, Los Angeles. The only cities in the top 10 but not located in California were Boston ($44.92 per hour) and Honolulu, Hawaii ($39.87).
On average, to rent a two-bedroom apartment or house in California, a tenant’s income must be $39.03, the highest of any state. California remained at the top of the list even though rent prices dropped significantly during the pandemic. Over the past year, according to Business Insider, home prices in San Francisco have fallen 30 percent. Many of Silicon Valley’s IT professionals and workers changed their place of residence to places such as the Lake Tahoe region (Nevada-California border), Texas’ Austin and others during the remote work period.
In second place in the ranking is the state of Hawaii, whose residents must earn $37.69 to rent a home. That said, while for Californians the high cost of rent is offset by relatively high wages, residents of the island state cannot boast wages proportional to the high cost of housing. The average wage in Hawaii is $17.56, which is less than half the amount required to rent.
In third place is Massachusetts, where the average cost of a two-bedroom apartment is $1885 per month (equal to an hourly wage of $36.24). Massachusetts is home to the Boston metropolitan area, one of the largest educational, cultural and commercial centers in the United States, as well as a point of attraction for professionals from around the country and abroad, which largely determines the high cost of housing.
In fourth place is New York City, where renting a home will cost, on average, $1770 across the state. In order to afford a two-bedroom apartment, New Yorkers would, in theory, have to work almost three full-time jobs at minimum wage (statewide, it’s $12.5 an hour).
Rounding out the top five is the U.S. capital. A resident of Washington, D.C., must earn $33.94 an hour to rent housing, a market that is in high demand in the city. Because of the greater number of commuters coming to Washington to build a career, the U.S. capital is among the nation’s leaders in the rental market.
Thus, more than half (58%) of all residents of the Federal District of Columbia rent housing, rather than owning it. By comparison, in California the figure is 45%, in Texas and Massachusetts – 38%, and in Maryland and Kentucky every third person rents a home. The lowest percentage of renters is in West Virginia, where only 27% use rental housing services.
Mississippi, West Virginia and Arkansas are at the bottom of the list of states with the cheapest housing. In Arkansas, renting a one-bedroom apartment will cost $615; thus, it will take just over the minimum wage, which is $11 per hour in the state.
Even cheaper would be housing in Puerto Rico, which, while not a state, has the status of an unincorporated organized territory of the United States. On the island, it’s enough to earn $9.72 an hour to afford two-bedroom housing.