I really don't know how people are existing in today's hellhole of a capitalistic landscape. I'm fairly lucky with a good-paying job and a lowish house payment. I'm still paying a lot more for food and whatnot than I did before covid.
I always think the same and can't stop feeling bad. I used to live in an apartment the payment kept creeping up until I said fuck it and bought a house 6 years ago. My mortgage is $1000. People now pay $2000+ a month for an apartment. This is a fucked time to be a renter.
I think at this point, all of us poors are just crossing our collective fingers and hoping the rent doesn't go up, we don't lose our jobs and we don't have to move for any reason. I'm hoping my landlord turns out to be immortal right now. "Affordable" units in the hood here are going for $3,000+, and you need to make less than the equivalent of minimum wage at a full-time job each to qualify for them. We stumbled our way into a three-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood for $2,200/month, and he hasn't raised the rent at all. The people who lived downstairs before said he charged them the same rent for close to 10 years before they moved out, so hopefully that streak will continue. Just have to worry that he'll die and whoever inherits the house comes in and jacks up the rent once they can, in which case we'd definitely need to move pretty far away to be able to afford something.
Naw, naw, it's cool... see, surely their income went up 30% in 5 years, right?... Right?
They did not, but it’s ok because they’re just feeling it wrong this year. Maybe someone should tell them how to feel about the economy so their income and expenses won’t matter anymore.
But we matched inflation last year! That means everything's okay now doesn't it? The inflation from previous years just goes away!
And it's totally not an average skewed higher by higher paying jobs right?. Us working class people didn't get shit. I listened to a nurse the other day complain that they were only getting cost of living adjustments instead of a "real raise." Like holy shit a lot of us got nothing. I'm making the same thing as I was during the pandemic and my money is worth the equivalent of $6 less per hour due to inflation.
It's a good thing Republicans are NOT trying to make Homelessness ILLEGAL and punishable by PRISON!
And then bill you for your stay on release
Don't you realize? We need more legal slaves.
And just for context, if you work 40 hours a week for $15 (well above minimum wage), your annual pre-tax income is $31,200.
The workers of the US really need unionize. Here in Scandinavia the average pre-tax income is closer to $84,000 with a 36-hour work week. We do however have a higher tax-rate, so that ends up at around $45,000 after taxes. Cost of living is also generally higher that the US. Of course that higher tax gives us free health care and education.
It's a good thing we all got fantastic promotions or hired into higher-status jobs or this could have been a problem. /s
In my last company, everybody could easily obtain "manager" status... because that was just the title for everyone who was salaried. Which didn't necessarily mean more money. In fact, usually not. It certainly meant more overtime... a lot more.
This looks like it means rent increased smoothly by $300 a month each year, bad enough, but what happened here was that it doubled in one year for many people. Went up by thousands, all at once.
Article behind a paywall
Okay... now they need $20,100 dollars more per year.
Cut the journalists some slack; ChatGPT 4.0 subscriptions can get expensive.
I guess I'm a shit landlord, because I'm still charging the same as 5 years ago.
This is a risky site to admit you're a landlord on xD
a stable tenant is worth more than a few rent increases.
.....Got any openings? 😭
I can tell you that an average 2-bedroom apartment was about 600USD when I moved to the city I currenlty live in. Today the cheapest apartment in town is 1300USA/month and getting higher. If I hadn't been lucky enough to buy a house when I did, I couldn't afford to live anymore.
public housing needs to double and the requirements to get on it need to be slashed.
Slashed? No - removed. Then landlords can't make us pay their give mortgages while they retire on our labor.
The average rent increase was my entire yearly take-home.
I keep reading articles like this. Between rent being too expensive, home prices going through the roof, food prices outpacing wage growth, car and home insurance going up just because it can, utilities getting more expensive, my question is when does it just become too much. The whole thing just screams corporate greed and I’m getting sick of it. I make 60% more than I did 20 years ago and I feel like I’m barely scraping by.
It is just waiting for a tipping point to kick the whole powder keg off, basically. Like a dormant volcano as the pressure builds below the surface. At that point, people will seem irrational and random, just because there are so many vectors of fail taking place in parallel.
Random example that comes to mind, was talking to a friend and they were mentioning their employer is going to start a weekend rotation for teams. One of the shifts has 3 people, so once every three weeks, one employee will be working 7 days a week. They previously had weekend staff to cover the weekend shift. The company's solution wasn't to hire more, redistribute, or one of the many other ways to solve the problem. Just, Lumberg from Office Space instead.
Headline: "5 years ago renters needed to make less than $60,000 a year to afford the typical rent; now they need to make almost $80,000"
5 years ago renters needed to make less than $60k, they made $69k. Now they need to make "almost $80k", they make $77k. When you put numbers to it, it seems less stark.
Median household income in 2024 is $77,400.
Median household income in 2019 was $68,700.
The rent for the fanciest apartment I've ever lived in (and ever will) was a little under 10k a year. New building, top floor, massive bathroom with sauna, a big balcony, a storage unit and a covered parking slot for my car all included. Oh and a lake view.
In fucking Narnia I presume
Mid-size city in Finland. I moved away after my relationship ended because 740€/month was too expensive for a single person to pay. The single room apartment in the middle of the city I had before that was around 450€/month.
Record profits though.
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