“The Out of Reach report similarly says that “more than half of all wage earners cannot afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at Fair Market Rent while working full-time. At least 60% cannot afford a modest two-bedroom rental home while working full-time.”
Yet the vast majority of those wage earners are not currently homeless. Clearly they’re meeting their housing needs somehow, despite not earning a so-called housing wage. Most likely, they too are making some tradeoffs between unit price, location, quality, and size.
The fact is that individuals and families are always going to have to make those tradeoffs at any price and wage level.
Lowering housing costs through deregulation—so that more housing, and more types of housing, can be built in more places—would certainly lessen the tradeoffs between housing costs and other desirable features.
Yet by ignoring that people do (and always will) make tradeoffs when finding housing, the Out of Reach report downplays what land-use deregulation can accomplish.
While calling it an essential part of an overall affordability strategy, the report says that “zoning reform alone cannot solve the affordable housing crisis, particularly for the lowest-income renters.”
That’s probably true if the goal is having every minimum wage worker spending no more than 30 percent of his income to live by himself in a midpriced, two-bedroom unit while working no more than 40 hours a week.
It’s probably not true if the goal is to give that minimum wage earner more housing options, so that he and his partner can afford to live in a larger unit, or he individually can rent a room closer to work or school.
Free markets give people what they want at a price they’re willing to pay. What they might be willing to pay for might be something different than what the Out of Reach report imagines they should have.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/22/is-housing-out-of-reach-for-more-than-half-of-workers