One of the things that Memphis has going for it — besides Beale Street, B.B. King and Elvis — is rent that won’t consume most people’s salaries as voraciously as they consume barbecue and bourbon.

Here, a one-bedroom apartment averages around $650 — a magnet for millennials looking for a place to unpack their startup dreams. On top of that, a recent WalletHub study rates Memphis as second among 150 major cities for having the lowest median forecast for a rent increase, and second for having the lowest cost of living.

But cheap rents and living costs didn’t do much to spare the city from being ranked as one of the worst places to be a renter.

On WalletHub’s list, Memphis ranked fourth from the bottom — 147 out of 150.

And what it all means is that to enjoy that affordability, most people must tiptoe through all the other messiness first.

“I would guess that it’s the job market, crime and the schools that’s hurting us,” said Mark Sunderman, holder of the Chair of Excellence in Real Estate at the University of Memphis. “It’s the socio-economic aspects that’s pulling us down.”

It appears so.

The study, for example, shows that Memphis ranks 63 out of 150 cities for rent affordability. That’s not bad. But when it comes to quality of life, it craters at 148 — right behind Cleveland and Newark, N.J., which came in at 150.

What likely drove that was its safety ranking — 140 out of 150. That even extends to the schools; another study showed that Tennessee ranks 49 out of 50 states for school safety.

Then there are these other studies.

One showed that the city ranked 124 for jobs and third from the bottom, at 147, when it came to socio-economic environment.

Meaning that stories like that of Alexandra Pusateri, who recently lamented the lack of decent job opportunities as her reason for giving up on her love affair with Memphis, may be less anecdotal and more canary-in-the-coal mine.

And struggles to find jobs that pay livable wages shed light on why, in spite of affordable rents, nearly 60 percent of renters spend 30 percent or more of their pay on a place to live, while an additional 33 percent spend half of their income on it.

So, here’s the deal.

Memphians should celebrate the fact that one of its assets — affordable rents — is attracting those young people who will likely hold the key to its future; the millennials who are migrating downtown, who are breathing life into old buildings and entrepreneurial spaces that were left for dead. That’s a testament not only to affordability, but to the city’s cultural magnetism and heritage.

I mean, this is a place that nurtured blues and rock and roll, a city that houses the place where Martin Luther King Jr. stood on his final journey in breaking the back of a racist system that many believed was unbreakable.

That’s even more of a reason why crime and economic stagnancy shouldn’t be allowed to continue to hobble this city from being all that it can be.

It makes no difference if a person can afford to pay the rent, but doesn’t have much left over because many of the jobs are temporary jobs, or jobs that don’t pay a livable wage, or jobs that are only generated out of the service economy and not the emerging digital economy.

It’s also tough to enjoy those cheap living spaces if crime is a constant worry.

“We can have the best rental rates in the world, but if we can’t deal with this quality of life issue, we’re going to remain at the bottom of the heap,” Sunderman said.

He’s right. Perhaps the best thing about studies like this is that by revealing where a city is, it also reveals how far it must go.

And get it started on a road map toward getting there.