For minimum wage workers, there's no catching up with the rent
Jul. 25—Until last month, Mikayla Droz slept on the floor of a one-bedroom apartment she shared with two other people. Before that, she lived in a trailer in what she describes as a "commune" near Tumwater, a two-hour walk from the nearest bus stop.
Droz, who earns $15 per hour working overnight shifts as an in-home caregiver, is just one example among many low-wage workers who must seek increasingly creative arrangements to scrape by as housing costs in Olympia skyrocket.
There is not a single state in the country where a worker earning minimum-wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment at HUD's Fair Market Rent, according to a recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), which tracked how many hours per week a person making minimum wage in each state would have to work to comfortably afford a modest apartment.
In Washington, that would be 86 hours a week — the equivalent of two full-time jobs.
That makes the state the seventh most unaffordable in the country, behind California, Hawaii, New York, and Massachusetts.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/for-minimum-wage-workers-there-s-no-catching-up-with-the-rent/ar-AAMxAzBv