Twisting the facts

The press is surprised that a person making MINIMUM wage can’t afford the MEDIAN cost of renting a two bedroom apartment in Florida. This is largely because they apparently don’t understand math. The minimum of anything will, by definition, not be the same as the median.

“Right now, the University of Florida estimated in 2020 that almost 70,000 metro households in Orlando and surrounding areas earning 50% of the area median income or less are paying more than 50% of income on their housing. That is not sustainable,”

Median income in Orlando for a household is $61,876, but this includes two incomes (pdf alert). A household with one wage earner would of course earn half of that, or about $31,000. I can’t believe a college had to study this, it seems like common sense to me.

A person making minimum wage (currently $8.65, soon to be $10.00) would make half of the individual income, or a quarter of the median household income.

“If they have children, we’re talking three to four full time jobs at minimum wage and obviously that is not something a single parent can do,” Nazworth said.

They are of course ignoring two things: If you make minimum wage, don’t have kids, and those who do aren’t forced to pay rent without assistance. They are actually making more than the rest of us. Read an older post on this, and see that a woman making minimum wage gets another $40,000 a year in benefits from the government.

A single mother with four children who earns $2,500 a year in a part time job (that works out to 6 hours a week at minimum wage) gets another $40,000 in government benefits.

But landlords are the greedy ones here.