Published: Monday, May 16, 2011
The Express-Times By Sara K. Satullo | The Express-Times

New Jersey has long been known as one of the country’s most expensive states in which to live.

A new national report, Out of Reach 2011, supports that notion with its finding that New Jersey is the fourth most expensive state in the nation in terms of the housing wage.

The housing wage is the hourly wage a family must earn - working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year - to be able to afford rent and utilities in a safe and modest home in the private housing market, according to the report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.

The report gauges affordability by using the “widely accepted” measure that no more than 30 percent of a person’s income should be spent on housing, the report states.

The fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental in New Jersey is $1,276, which means that a family must earn $51,044 annually. A minimum-wage worker would have to work 3.4 full-time jobs a week, or 135 hours, to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.

The report also finds that the typical renter in the state earns $15.82 per hour, well below the $24.54 hourly wage needed to afford a modest rental. An estimated 61 percent of New Jersey renters don't earn enough to afford the state's fair-market two-bedroom rental.

Pennsylvanians fare much better than New Jerseyans with a two-bedroom apartment’s fair market rent running $837 and a housing wage of $16.09. A household must earn $2,790 monthly, or $33,476 annually, to avoid paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

A minimum-wage worker would have to work 89 hours a week all year to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the fair market rate.

"This data only emphasizes the need for more affordable home choices in our state," said Diane Sterner, executive director for the Housing and Community Development Network, in a statement. Gov. Chris Christie's "proposed state budget has no money to either build or rehabilitate new homes that our hard working families can afford. On the contrary, for the third year in a row NJ's Affordable Housing Trust Fund is being raided."

New Jersey’s figures are right in line with what Terry Newhard, executive director of Northwest New Jersey Community Action Program Inc., has been seeing in Warren County. He predicts the fair market rent is even higher in Hunterdon and Somerset counties.

“The folks that we see are fighting for housing,” Newhard said. “Pick a town like Phillipsburg with 5,000 housing units: 2,000 of them are low-income units. It is difficult if you’re making $7.25 an hour to be living in a place like New Jersey.”

It’s a common public misperception that those coming to NORWESCAP and other social service agencies are all on welfare and unemployed, Newhard said. Yet, only 1 to 2 percent of the people NORWESCAP serves are on welfare, he said.

The bulk are working or retired, and earning $7 to $10 an hour.

“Even then you still can’t afford it,” Newhard said. “The perception is if you work you are not in poverty. That is not even close to being true. We have people working two jobs and they’re still in poverty.”

These are our average workers, the people working at the gas station, writing your news, protecting your streets and collecting your garbage, Newhard said. One in four jobs in America do not pay enough to get people above the poverty rate.

“Everybody needs to live somewhere, and I think if we make the cost of housing too high we push people farther and farther away,” Newhard said. “If you want to have a real community and have people live where they work, they got to have affordable housing.”

New Jersey saw an exodus of people to Pennsylvania for many years as they sought cheaper housing and lower taxes. But as prices have ticked upward across the Delaware River, people are returning to New Jersey and doubling or tripling up in rentals to make ends meet, Newhard said.

“How do you survive?” he queried. “You try to share the expenses with other people.”