For the last decade, renters in Ohio have needed to earn a higher hourly wage each year to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment. But there’s been a gap between what renters need and what they actually earn, and it’s getting bigger.
Full time workers in Ohio need to earn $23.82 an hour on average for that two-bedroom apartment, an increase of just under 6% in a year, according to the annual Out of Reach report from the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO). But the average hourly wage in Ohio is $19.59, which is $4.23 less than that needed rent wage.
"If we compare it with 2020, the gap that year between the renter wage and housing wage was only $1.57. So in just six years, that gap has grown 169%," said Amy Riegel, executive director of COHHIO. "Even though wages are going up, it is just not fast enough to keep up with these rising housing costs. So it creates an environment where many of our workers in factories and retail organizations, in service centers and offices and hotels and hospitals all across the state are struggling to meet these basic needs."
"We just know not enough housing is getting built," said Ohio Chamber of Commerce General Counsel Tony Long. "There's 4.7 million units short nationwide. We think in Ohio, we're behind by at least 100,000 getting built on top of the affordability issue the fact that we just don't have supply. We think we've got to find some solution here on the supply side."
Long said government regulations and construction costs are helping create the shortage of affordable housing. But advocates said immigration policies that are shrinking the workforce are to blame as well.
A study from the progressive leaning Policy Matters Ohio released in June showed out of 5.6 million jobs in Ohio, four of the 10 most common ones paid so little last year that the median worker would qualify for food assistance. The report estimates that's more than one million Ohioans, or 19.4% of the state's total workforce.
