ALBANY — A person earning $23.65 an hour in Schenectady County must work 48 hours a week — close to the equivalent of a full extra workday, just to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment, a new local study has found. In order to make rent on a two-bedroom apartment, a tenant may need to work up to 64 hours a week.
It’s an experience shared among low-to-moderate income renters and prospective home buyers across the Capital Region, where New Yorkers are seeing wages stagnate or decline, while rents and median home prices continue to balloon, according to the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, which released its findings in August.
For renters hoping to buy, the gap is just as steep: two-income households at 80% of the area median income fall short by $16,350 a year in Albany County and $107,000 in Saratoga County.
“It’s a burden that underscores the difficulty that our citizens are having in being able to afford housing in the region,” said Mark Castiglione, executive director of the planning commission. The report urges local leaders to increase housing supply, align wages with living costs, and expand access to affordable options for renters and buyers.
Rising rents
Across the Albany-Troy-Schenectady metro area, wages trail rent rates: a fair market one-bedroom costs $1,230 a month to rent, and a two-bedroom is $1,487. Fair market rents are compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to calculate housing subsidies…