California has in recent years turned up its effort to establish minimum wages that allow workers to afford life in the Golden State. But the most daring experiment may well be coming not from particularly high-cost Los Angeles or San Francisco, but from a couple of states east.
On Nov. 13, the City Council in Santa Fe, New Mexico, voted to integrate the cost of housing in its calculation of the citywide minimum wage going forward. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, this marks the first time in the U.S. that a city has factored local housing costs directly into setting its minimum.
