Washington — If you’re living in a one-parent household making the $7.75 minimum wage in Hawaii, you would need to work 163 hours a week to comfortably make your rent payment on a two-bedroom apartment — giving you a luxurious five hours a week to sleep, eat or spend time with your family. To comfortably afford a decent two-bedroom home on a 40-hour work week, by contrast, you’d need to earn $31.61 an hour.
The map here shows the hourly wage that a household needs to earn to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment in America. High hourly wages are necessary to afford decent housing in Washington, D.C. ($28.04), California ($26.65), New York ($25.67), New Jersey ($25.17), Massachusetts ($24.64) and other states.
Housing affordability is defined as paying less than 30 percent of your income to housing and it assumes a “fair market rent.” — The Washington Post
