I think this is an excellent example of a bad chart. The premise seems to be an illustration the geographical differences in income needed to obtain housing. However, the arbitrary coloring choices makes a $13 county (example Dallas County, TX) look the same as a $20 county (example LA Country, CA). The difference $7/hour is almost the same as the minimum wage in Dallas--that's a significant amount that the map disguises.
Speaking of minimum wages, what's up with the five Washington and 3 Oregon counties with minimum wages above the "what you's need to make" mark?
Columbia County
Pend Oreille County
Stevens County
Wahkiakum County
Lincoln County
Harney County
Morrow County
Wheeler County
> The difference $7/hour is almost the same as the minimum wage in Dallas--that's a significant amount that the map disguises.
Agreed, but I'm not sure that makes it a bad chart. To me, one of the things the chart is saying is that 1BDR housing wages outside of the $10-13 range are uninteresting.
If this is something they checked and know to be true, then deliberately zooming in on that range is useful, because it highlights that variance. If they're hiding relevant information by ignoring things outside of that range, then it's a problem.
I mean, it's a choropleth. That already starts edging into "bad chart" territory.
Low cost-of-living counties in states with high minimum wages meant for city dwellers, most likely. The cost of living difference between Seattle and eastern Washington is immense, but guess which one the state sets minimum wage based on.
County-level data is available on a per-state basis from the NLIHC website.
I went and downloaded all of the state data spreadsheets and merged them into one big spreadsheet. It took maybe 20 lines of python.
While that is good to have, a glance through the PDF actually says this data is different.
Namely, the PDF indicates 2-bedroom whereas the WaPo article indicates 1-bedroom. I should probably do a number-comparison on a per-county basis to see if the WaPo writers simply made a mistake, but I'm feeling pretty lazy.
I avergaged the 1-bedroom numbers for all of the counties in Rhode Island (guess why I picked Rhode Island) and got ~$15.00, which is ~$3.00 less than the 2-bedroom on the PDF. So they probably calculated it correctly.
Two bedrooms are always surprisingly close in price to one bedrooms.
When I hear words like "decent" I check for my wallet. When I was at a start-up making very below-average wages (in the Boston area, in fact), I lived in a very below-average place.
Yes, but you had the expectation that things would get better (and I'm assuming you had the skills to make much more).
My friends who aren't involved in the tech industry have quite a long row to hoe when it comes to making more money. I had a friend (who loves cooking and is accomplished in restaurant work) struggle to find anything above $13-15 an hour in NYC (and that's hard work at a busy restaurant), and it doesn't often get better than that.
For some, living in below average accommodations isn't a necessary stop along the way but the destination, and that stinks.
Your first paragraph is something important, but not what I was talking about, and not related to the rest of your comment.
First, as long as money has any meaning, people with more of it are going to live better than people with less of it. Maybe it would be more fair if all young people lived below average and all older people lived above average, but it's a huge reconstruction of society.
Second, NYC is the fifth most expensive city in the world[1]. I presume your friend is there because he's getting something besides money for his work -- adulation of customers, or a chance to make it really big.
Or, it's a deliberate consumption choice. He wants to live in walking distance of Broadway and great restaurants. Well, that's a choice in how he spends his money. I could live in a mansion in my city and complain about how expensive it is, but I shouldn't expect any sympathy because I choose to live someplace expensive. I could deliberately have 8 kids and then complain about how much times my kids require, or I could be a Olympic gymnast and complain about how much training I have to do, or I could keep a cluster of 40 PCs in my living room to play 40 simultaneous WoW games and then complain about how much it all costs.
There's nothing magical about consumption choices because they go into "housing" versus "free time" or "computers" or "nights at the opera." If someone was renting the most expensive cars in the US and complaining about how he can't afford something, the answer would be very similar to another person who was renting the most expensive real estate in the US.
Living on top of Mount Everest is expensive, even if you were born there.
It just means that they don't include buildings that are falling apart, nor do they include penthouse flats. Texas and Louisiana both have lots of dark purple and have the very worst public schools in the nation.
It's really just a pretty good indication of where the jobs are.
Click "wrote about a report", then in that article click "new report", and you'll find this:
"The signature finding of Out of Reach is the annual Housing Wage - the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a decent two-bedroom rental home at HUD-estimated Fair Market Rent (FMR) while spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs."
It is not at all obvious. I really wish that news articles like this would set aside a section where they explicitly name and link to their sources rather than burying them as hyperlinks in the text.
Yes, it really seems like a variable approach would work better. There's a big difference between spending 30% of your income on housing while living in a rural area and doing so in the middle of Manhattan. I imagine that percentage could go considerably higher in big cities.
My dad just bought a down town storefront with a killer apt above for 25k. I can't believe that telecommuting programmers aren't owning small towns all throughout America.
There's a lot more that goes into enjoying one's surroundings than just the price paid to own a home there. For those who enjoy small towns, you're absolutely right; what an amazing opportunity.
Oil boom. All the various workers are making triple digit salaries, and like any good boom, people offering food and housing are adjusting their prices upwards to match.
Is it an Americanism to use the word every in this fashion?
I looked at the title and wondered why you would want the sum total of all the housing costs. I would rather know what each county's costs are. Clicking on the link it is each, however given the prestige of the website made me wonder if this is another subtle example of British verses American usage?
Brooklyn is the same however I'd like to see this broken down further by neighborhoods of Brooklyn (or all boroughs) because prices can vary significantly by neighborhood
Texas, where I live, is notable in the map for the diversity of costs, in particular the frequent juxtaposition of the highest and lowest cost counties.
The rich live in cities, and landlords set rents according to the ability to pay.
Speaking of minimum wages, what's up with the five Washington and 3 Oregon counties with minimum wages above the "what you's need to make" mark?
Columbia County Pend Oreille County Stevens County Wahkiakum County Lincoln County Harney County Morrow County Wheeler County