Trying to rent a two-bedroom, Bay Area apartment on a minimum-wage salary? You’ll need to hold down at least three full-time jobs to make it happen.
That’s the alarming conclusion from a new nationwide report that highlights the gap between what housing costs and what people earn, underscoring the affordability crisis gripping the country as a whole — and California and the Bay Area in particular.
To afford a standard two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco area — which includes Marin and San Mateo counties, and is the most expensive metro area in the country — a renter would need to make $61.50 an hour, according to the report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. If they’re making the state’s minimum wage of $15 an hour — or even close to the higher minimum required in San Francisco — they’d need to work about four full-time jobs to pay the rent.
