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Interactive Map Shows Where Minimum Wage Workers Can Afford To Live In NYC
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 10, 2015
Modified Dec 10, 2015
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 10, 2015
Modified Dec 10, 2015
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Last week, it was announced that over 1,800 apartments that had been fraudulently listed as market-rate condos would be restored as rent-stabilized units, as they were supposed to have been all along. But despite the city and the de Blasio administration's best efforts, the affordable housing crisis isn't going to suddenly get fixed overnight, especially not for people who are struggling to survive on minimum wage salaries—which won't be improved for years.
StreetEasy, who have been writing about just how difficult (well, "impossible") finding housing in NYC is for people at the minimum wage level, have articulated that struggle with the map below, which shows where in the city people can hope to find housing at those prices. And the results, unsurprisingly, are sparse.
Here is their explanation for the data set:
Using full year 2014 data, we analyzed the number of rental listings that would be affordable to a person making $8.75 per hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. For this analysis, we assumed that a 40 percent rent burden would constitute “affordable” rent (meaning 40 percent of the earner’s gross annual income goes to rent). We also assumed that a studio or one-bedroom unit would be occupied by one person, a two-bedroom unit would be occupied by two people, and a three-bedroom unit would be occupied by three people (all of whom are making minimum wage and working the same number of hours as stipulated above).
As for those results, the best bet for minimum wage workers in a situation with no good bets is Bedford-Stuyvesant (but for how long?), which led the city in 2014 with 78 units of housing affordable to minimum wage earners. They were followed by East New York (36), Washington Heights (29), Crown Heights (29) and Bushwick (17).
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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