SANTA CRUZ — It has happened. Again.
For the second year in a row, a housing report has ranked Santa Cruz as the most expensive metropolitan county in the nation for renters.
According to the annual National Low Income Housing Coalition’s “Out of Reach” report, released Thursday, a worker living in the Santa Cruz-Watsonville metropolitan district would need to earn an hourly wage of $77.96 to afford a two- bedroom rental at a fair market rate.
Put another way, a local renter earning the state’s minimum wage at $16 per hour would need to work 4.9 full-time jobs to afford a two-bedroom unit within the region’s fair market rate of $4,054 per month, according to the report.
“This news, while disheartening, is not a surprise,” Elaine Johnson, executive director of Housing Santa Cruz County, said in a release in response to the report. “The numbers in these reports demonstrate why we must continue to prioritize housing solutions to make progress for our communities.”
The troubling figure was arrived at through what the coalition calls the “housing wage” — an estimation of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at fair market value without spending more than 30% of their income. Spending no more than 30% of gross income for a rental meets the definition of “affordable,” according to state housing authorities.
This year’s housing wage in Santa Cruz also outpaced by almost $15 its own high-water mark set last year at $63.33, which was also enough to earn the 2023 report’s top spot. When the county ranked second in 2022, this same figure was $60.35.
The runner-up in this year’s report is the San Francisco metropolitan area with a $64.60 housing wage. Of the top 10 high-cost areas nationwide, California jurisdictions held eight of those spots and, based on the same equation, took home the title of the most expensive state in the country.
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Taken from an even more local lens, the report continues to paint a concerning picture. Using data from 2018-2021, the report highlighted that renters make up about 40%, or 38,635, of the county’s …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
