Working minimum wage in Houston? You need to work 112 hours to afford a 2BR apartment.

Rent houses like this one along Bayou View Drive (shown here in 2015) in Houston are hard to afford for workers making the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. A new 2019 report shows workers would need to earn $21.23 an hour to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. less Rent houses like this one along Bayou View Drive (shown here in 2015) in Houston are hard to afford for workers making the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. A new 2019 report shows workers would need to earn ... more Photo: Gary Coronado, Houston Chronicle Photo: Gary Coronado, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Working minimum wage in Houston? You need to work 112 hours to afford a 2BR apartment. 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Houstonians would have to make $21.23 per hour to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, according to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The report, called “Out of Reach,” is in its 30th year and documents the gap between what renters make and what they need to afford fair-market housing. Workers making the minimum wage in Texas of $7.25 per hour — the same as the federal minimum wage — would have to work 91 hours for a 1-bedroom or 112 hours for a 2-bedroom.

Overall, Texans would need to make $20.29 per hour to keep up with housing costs, slightly less than Houstonians.

“Safe and affordable housing is a fundamental human right, not a prize that you win after 112 hours of work,” said Zoe Middleton, Southeast Texas co-director of the advocacy group Texas Housers.

Ranked by the wage needed for a two-bedroom home at fair market rent, Texas is the 20th most expensive state in the country.

The state of Texas is 38 percent renters. Forty-five percent of Harris County households rent; within Houston city limits, according to another study, 57 percent of households rent. To afford a two-bedroom at fair market rate in the county, residents would need to have an annual income of $44,160.

“We tend to give a lot of tax abatements or enter into good-faith deals, hoping they result in better paying jobs or more affordable housing,” Middleton said. “That’s simply not the case.”

The low-wage workers, Middleton said, include daycare workers, baristas and people who bag groceries.

Houston’s affordable housing crisis was heightened by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

A report released in March by the Greater Houston Flood Mitigation Consortium, which includes the University of Houston, the Kinder Institute and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, pointed out that 475,000 Harris County residents live in multifamily units at risk of flooding. Increasingly, people can only afford units that are in flood-prone areas.

That report found that from 2000 to 2014, extremely low-income renters in Harris County rose by 37 percent. Available units, however, grew by only 18 percent.

Nationally, workers who make $7.25 an hour would have to work nearly 127 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom rental. There are only 37 affordable units for every 100 extremely low-income renter household across the country.

The disparity is worse for black and Hispanic renters.