Quote:
Originally Posted by Stockerzzz
The definition of affordable should not be a person living on disability. Your cherry-picked example is someone making $12,000 per year. The rule of thumb of using 25-30% of income dedicated to housing leaves this person $3,000 - $3,600 per year for housing.
That's $250 - $300 per month for rent. Your example is absurd.
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You think it's absurd because you believe it is a rare instance, an example that doesn't impact more than a few people. But you're wrong. The *median* income for the first quintile of households is $12,000 per year, with the max at about $21,000. In a city with approximately 1 million households, that means that
at least 100,000 households are in exactly the circumstances you consider "absurd" and "cherry-picked."
The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of Americans are completely unaware of just how bad things are for the lowest-income individuals and households in this country. You're obviously not alone in your misconception that the situation I described is somehow unusual or so rare that you can casually dismiss it as an outlier but the unfortunate reality is that it's *not* particularly rare. It's just that because of the economic stratification and economic segregation that far surpasses any racial segregation that ever existed in this country, most Americans who *aren't* in the lowest quintile of income don't know people who are. And even when they do know people in the lowest quintile, often they don't know just how poor they are because American culture puts such a burden of shame on being impoverished that people who are that poor often would rather suffer in silence than risk being humiliated further.