It’s difficult to afford NYC rents on the Minimum wage -research

New York City has closed the door on minimum-wage workers.

A study found there is not one Big Apple neighborhood where a worker earning the state minimum can afford the median rent.

New york city rent

In fact, a New Yorker would need to make at least $38.80 an hour — or more than four times the $8.75 minimum wage — to afford the city’s median asking rent of $2,690, if the worker is shouldering the rent alone, according to the real estate website StreetEasy.

“What really sticks out here is the number zero — the number of neighborhoods where minimum-wage workers can afford” the median rent, said Alan Lightfeldt, a StreetEasy data scientist. “I was taken aback by that.”

Rent is considered affordable if it doesn’t exceed 40% of income — but good luck finding an apartment on those terms: In Manhattan, where the median rent is $3,092, workers would have to make at least $44.60 an hour to reach that threshold. Even in the other boroughs, where apartments tend to be less expensive, the numbers are still shocking: A worker would need to earn $35.87 an hour to afford the median Brooklyn pad; $29.21 in Queens; $26.21 in Staten Island, and $21.26 in the Bronx.

And there aren’t enough hours in a day for a minimum-wage worker to afford to live in the city’s highest priced neighborhood, Central Park South, where the median rent is $5,898. At that price, an employee would have to work a 389-hour week.

New Yorkers who live on minimum wage incomes were not surprised by the findings.

“All of our salaries go toward rent and food each month. There is no room for anything else, not even new clothes,” said Rahina Khanam, 30, who earns about $1,400 a month at a Dunkin’ Donuts in lower Manhattan and lives with her similarly paid husband in a $1,400-a-month apartment in Elmhurst, Queens. “There’s talk of it raising to $1,600. I don’t know how we will be able to put food on the table at that point.”

Bronx native Angelo Frangaj, 19, a minimum-wage worker at Famous Famiglia pizzeria, says he can’t afford his own place, despite long hours.

“I live with my parents because rent is too expensive,” he said. “I work over 60 hours a week...but don’t have enough for my own place because the rent would cut into my other expenses, like groceries.”

 

The report comes about a month after a state panel recommended the minimum wage for fast-food workers be raised to $15 an hour over the next few years.

"This reaffirms what we already know: For far too long prices have gone up, while the minimum wage has just not kept pace. We have a moral obligation to ensure a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and as long as a minimum wage can't even pay for roof over your head, we're not keeping it," said Gov. Cuomo.

Mayor de Blasio agrees with the governor on this point.

 

“This study reaffirms what too many New Yorkers already know: It’s past time for Albany to raise the wage,” said mayoral spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick.

The state’s minimum wage will rise to $9 by the end of the year. But even a minimum wage boost to $15 wouldn’t be enough to solve the housing crisis, according to the StreetEasy report.

A New Yorker earning that salary would be able to afford one neighborhood — Throgs Neck in the Bronx, where the median rent is $946. That would be affordable to someone earning $13.64 an hour.

Other relatively livable neighborhoods include New Dorp, Staten Island, where residents need to earn $15.76 to afford the median rent, part of the Bronx near Hunts Point ($16.45), and Far Rockaway, Queens ($17.09).

About 267,000 workers in the city make minimum wage, according to the state Department of Labor. Opponents of raising the minimum wage say it would hurt small business owners, trigger job losses and spark higher costs for consumers.