From Deseret News archives:
Rental housing is 'out of reach'
Units are hard to find, and minimum wage is not keeping pace
"If you are a low-income person in Utah, you are in jeopardy," he said.
According to the study, the current fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Utah is $675. To afford the monthly rate, a household must earn $12.98 per hour 252 percent of the current minimum wage.
Nationally, the housing wage is $15.78, placing Utah in 25th place, slightly lower than in years past.
"That's the nutshell, that rental housing remains unaffordable and out of reach for the average Utahn," said Claudia O'Grady, director of multiethnic development and chairwoman for the Utah Housing Coalition.
In Salt Lake, where a minimum two-year wait for housing assistance is not uncommon, an hourly wage of $13.87 is required to afford rent for a two-bedroom apartment, according to the report.
To address the housing crisis, advocates on Tuesday listed several factors expanded government housing assistance, additional building of affordable rental units and an increase of the $5.15-per-hour minimum wage that all need to be present to be effective.
"All of the above," Funk said.
Salt Lake City's housing list for Section 8 vouchers a monthly housing subsidy to low-income families has been closed for two years after reaching a record 7,000 applicants, said Jill Riddle, Section 8 program manager for the Salt Lake City Housing Authority. At the current attrition rate, it could take up to seven years to reach every person on a list that large, she said.
"We witness at the Salt Lake City Housing Authority every day this gap that this report talks about," Riddle said.
In the past six months, the housing authority has removed 242 people from its waiting list, all of whom have waited more than two years for assistance. Twenty-one percent of those have an annual income of $5,000 or less, and 35 percent make between $5,000 and $10,000 annually.
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