Findings Thus Far

On Friday, I finally got around to reading Out of Reach. It's a journal/magazine put out annually by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) that addresses the state of affordable housing in the country for the previous year. It was dense (chock full of charts and tables and graphs about housing data) but really informative. I mean REALLY informative. Out of Reach is where affordable housing advocates get their data. That said, I'm an idiot for not reading it sooner. Here I was struggling to find information and Out of Reach was just sitting there in the B&B Rider Manual!

To start with, there are a lot of acronyms:

• AMI (area median income): the average income of a household for a given region
• ELI (extremely low income): a household making less than 30% of the AMI
• FMR (fair market rent): what you could expect to pay for an apartment with basic utilities in an area

Then there's the jargon:

• Affordable Housing: when a household spends 30% or less of its income on rent/utilities
• Cost Burdened: when a household spends more than 30% of income on rent/utilities
• Severely Cost Burdened: when a household spends 50% or more of income on rent/utilities
• Housing Wage: the necessary hourly wage for someone working full-time to afford an apartment at FMR
• Renter Wage: estimated hourly wage of renters in a region

Then there are the graphs and charts and maps... (Like this one about how many hours you have to work at minimum wage to afford an apartment per state!)

Quick Facts:

Berkshire County

2 BR apartment at FMR: $804/mo (That's how much my apartment is! It's technically a 2 BR but easily fits three)

Housing wage for a 2 BR at FMR: $15.46/hr

AMI: $71,800/yr 

ELI: $21,540/yr

Lowell Area (includes Dracut)

2 BR at FMR: $1,157/mo

Housing wage for 2 BR at FMR: $22.25/hr

AMI: $90,700/yr

ELI: $31,298/yr