Rising rents and stubborn stagnant wages do not a winning combination make — especially for American families feeling squeezed by the cost of keeping a roof over their heads.

In its annual “Out of Reach” report, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition has broken down exactly how many hours a household would need to work and how much they would need to earn per hour to afford a basic rental today.

A worker would need to earn $19.35 per hour — nearly three times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 — to be able to afford a basic two-bedroom unit. A one-bedroom unit is only slightly less costly, requiring a wage of at least $15.50 an hour. The average renter nationwide makes $15.16 an hour, which might explain why so many adults are leaning on roommates these days. (The report, which uses Fair Market Rent figures determined by Department of Housing and Urban Development, sets one-bedroom units at $806 and two-bedrooms at $1,006.)



Not surprisingly, some states have it worse than others. Hawaii, Washington, D.C., California, New York and New Jersey have the highest rents, each requiring workers to earn more than $25 per hour and, in Hawaii’s case, nearly $32 per hour.

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We are ready to officially retire the old personal finance adage about spending less than 30% of your income on housing.



In terms of hours on the job, it's next to impossible to afford a one-bedroom rental on one minimum wage income without spending more than 30% on rent. For the majority of the country, workers need to clock between 61 and 79 hours a week to stay within that threshold.





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Nearly half of U.S. renter households are spending more than 30% of their income on housing, per the report. One in four renter households spend more than half their income on housing. The Coalition's findings are based on a combination of research from the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, among other federal agencies.

Explaining why housing costs are so high is the easy part — too much demand, too little supply. The rental housing vacancy rate was 7% in the first quarter of 2015, continuing a steady decline since the financial crisis sent many families fleeing the busted housing market in search of rentals.

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