COVID pandemic worsens housing crisis

Illinois worker must make $21.30 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment, more than that in collar counties

Cramped houses in a Chicago suburb, where the housing crisis is especially acute, according to an annual study. (Shutterstock)

Cramped houses in a Chicago suburb, where the housing crisis is especially acute, according to an annual study. (Shutterstock)

By Ted Cox

A dire U.S. housing crisis has only gotten worse in the coronavirus pandemic, according to an annual national study released Tuesday.

The annual study, “Out of Reach,” has examined the intersection of housing and income across the nation since 1989. This year it found that an Illinois worker has to make $44,310 a year to afford what it determines to be the state’s fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, $1,108 a month, at the common recommendation that a family spend no more than 30 percent of income on housing. That translates to $21.30 an hour over a 40-hour week. According to the study, about a third of Illinois households are renters.

Just two years ago, the same study found that an Illinoisan needed to make $20.34 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment, then set at a fair market value of $1,058 a month. The study’s dire warning issued two years ago continues to apply: “The cost of rental housing varies across the state, but there is no place in Illinois where a minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment.”

In fact, although the state’s minimum wage just rose again to $10 an hour this month, up from $8.25 two years ago on the way to step increases that will set it at $15 an hour in 2025, that still means that a minimum-wage worker in Illinois isn’t even making half what’s required to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

And the situation has only gotten worse with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Even before the pandemic, far too many families in Illinois were making impossible decisions between paying rent and basic necessities like food and medicine,” said Sharon Legenza, executive director of Housing Action Illinois, in a statement accompanying the release of this year’s report. “Now, with decreased work hours, furloughs, and job losses from an ongoing public health crisis, they’re in an even tougher situation. We’re going to see a wave of evictions and a spike in homelessness unless more rental assistance dollars are made available.”

The study points out that racial disparities in affordable housing were already common before the pandemic, and it echoes other studies showing that African American and Hispanic workers are not only more likely to be working low-wage jobs, but those jobs are more likely to have been affected by the economic decline resulting from efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

“This income inequality partly explains why 44 percent of Black households and 42 percent of Latino households spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing, compared to 26 percent of White households,” the study states, going on to point out that African Americans and Hispanics are also more likely to be renters.

In Illinois, the $21.30 hourly wage required to afford a two-bedroom apartment is the highest in the Midwest, with only Minnesota approaching that at $20.53 an hour. A county breakdown finds the problem acute in the collar counties surrounding Chicago’s Cook County, where a minimum-wage worker would have to labor more than 80 hours a week just to afford a one-bedroom rental home.

According to a news release accompanying the new study, “Working at the state minimum wage, an Illinois resident must work 72 hours per week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment or work 85 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom apartment. While the minimum wage is $13.50 in Chicago and $13 in suburban Cook County, the Housing Wage for the metro Chicago area is $24.”

Nationally, however, Illinois ranks a more moderate 18th among states in its wage required for a two-bedroom apartment, with Hawaii leading the way at $38.76 an hour, closely followed by California at $36.96.

Citing the stay-at-home orders imposed by many U.S. governors in the pandemic, including J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, the release goes on to state that “a stable place to stay at home and care for themselves and their families was already out of reach for far too many Illinoisans” even before the pandemic. “These households are even closer to the brink after months of an ongoing pandemic and economic downturn. With Illinois courts reopening and time running out on most restrictions on eviction, additional federal rental assistance must be passed immediately.”

“Congress needs to act during July to keep people from losing their homes,” said Bob Palmer, policy director of Housing Action Illinois, which joined with the National Low Income Housing Coalition in releasing the study in Illinois. “We expect existing resources for emergency rental assistance to be quickly exhausted based on current needs. We need a large-scale federal investment and renter protections such as those proposed in the HEROES Act.”

The HEROES Act passed the U.S. House in May as a proposed $3 trillion successor to the CARES Act, the original federal COVID-19 relief package. But it has not moved in the Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Palmer applauded the HEROES Act’s provisions for:

  • $100 billion in emergency rental assistance

  • $75 billion in homeowner assistance

  • A national, uniform moratorium on evictions and foreclosures

  • $11.5 billion to prevent and respond to outbreaks among people experiencing homelessness

  • 100,000 new emergency housing vouchers targeted to people with the greatest needs

  • $100 million for housing counseling

  • Additional funding resources and policies to ensure housing stability

According to the study, nationally more than 200,000 people are homeless, and 356,000 more are living in emergency shelters, with 2.7 million people living in housing conditions that are considered overcrowded.