Why is living not affordable for so many people? I worked all my life from age 13 to retirement at 72. There have been times in my life when I couldn’t afford the things I needed, and there were times, too, when I had extra—although never extravagantly. How much does a person or a family have to earn to afford to live?
There is a great resource at livingwage.mit.edu that lets anyone take a look at how affordable life is for them based on family composition and where they live. For example, in San Luis Obispo County, California, where I live, a single person needs $55,025 a year before taxes to meet expenses. That’s a retirement income that’s out of reach for a lot of people, let alone if they need assistance. That’s an amount out of reach for most young people starting out, too.
A single adult with two children here in San Luis Obispo County needs to earn $59.93 an hour to afford the basics. That’s $124,647 a year. Child care and housing are the biggest components by far. Child care costs on average $26,154 a year for that single parent and housing $27,429. The website breaks down the major costs. For example, medical ($8,309), transportation ($16,625), and taxes ($18,162).
The website also shows typical annual salaries in the same geographic area. A typical wage for a person working as office/administrative support is $52,170, a health care support worker $37,760, a production worker $48,670, an educator $75,888.
There is a mismatch between wages and costs. The living wage calculator gives everyone a free tool to take a look at where they stand, where they live, anywhere in the country. By the way, minimum wage here in California is $16 an hour, which is less than any individual or family needs for life to be affordable. Two adults, both working, with no children would each need to earn $17.89 an hour. It is time to ask why. Why is life not affordable? What has to change? How can this be done?
Linda Rinaldi
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Feb 20 – Mar 2, 2025.
Housing. The answer is and has been housing for many years. People know this and their representatives know this yet the underproduction of housing in California is treated as a low-priority issue. 96% of residential land in this state is zoned for single-family residential and it quite simply is not a sustainable formula to sufficiently meet the demand for housing in the state. The solution is simple and has worked in cities across the country: remove onerous restrictions, restrict appeals, and allow people to increase the residential density on their properties. Allow supply to naturally meet the demand for housing in high-demand areas instead of exporting our housing concerns to unsustainable tracts in the desert. Density near where people work creates price competition, allows people to spend significantly less on their transportation, and ultimately works towards affordability for all.
Carson:
The best our politicians can do is offer this generation “tiny houses” that sit on pallets in parking lots. You can also buy one of these castles from Home Depot and bring it home strapped to the roof of your Honda.
Meanwhile, the city of SLO builds yet ANOTHER parking
structure for their dead economic corridor so non-existent consumers can park their cars.
You give government way too much credit, instead, follow the money. These white elephants get funded by bonds from which local banks provide the capital. SLO is glaringly small. Crooked politicians, developers, chapters of the two political parties, and bankers collude together to enrich themselves and raise taxes on the rest of us.
Pretty soon if not already, tax revenue will come solely from property tax, tax paying businesses are closing daily. There’s no one to share the burden with. No one will be spared, even renters. Rent will go up as the tax on their dwellings go up.
We can thank Ronald Reagan and the GOP.
Compare what a house and car cost in the late 1970, and see how the contrived inflation of RR’s trickledown fraud from 1980 over 40+ years, for the profits of the wealthy and corporations.
Along with all of the questionable “recessions” most all caused by the republicans. GHW Bush coined the phrase “recession” as is sounded “kinder and gentler” than the real description, a “depression.”
Reagan caused two right after being installed, er I mean, elected. They called it a “double dip recession.” But it was not cute…
A friend calls those “recessions” “selective harvesting by the rich and Wall Street.”
All those who say Ronald Reagan was a saint are deluded and brainwashed, and helped bring us to were we are. The GOP since Reagan have always been trying to destroy Our Democracy, and replace it with their confederate/Russian style of fascist dictatorship.
Protest, take non-violent action and we can win this if less than 4% of Americans cause a General Strike, until we beat back this fascist regime, and save our democractic republic.
At 53yo, I remember all the adults around me freaking out about Reagan. It wasn’t his policies they abhored, it was the fact that he reminded them of their parent’s generation. These Boomers were the same ones who, in all seriousness, tried to levitate the Pentagon. It’s hard to take anything they say seriously.
Starbucks, Uber, door dash, weed, alcohol, eating out, Netflix, I phone, concerts vacations, fast food, expensive car payments. Should I go on.
Imagine the savings.
Marco:
You forgot low wages, you can’t budget your way out of poverty. People often consume drugs and alcohol to deal with past trauma or the trauma of living in a dystopian economy. I’ve never met an alcoholic or drug addict that has chosen to be one. If it was that simple, no one would have substance abuse disorders and everyone would be a millionaire.
Respectfully, your view of the world people live in is rather simplistic and uncritical. I would guess because you yourself have never had to live in poverty or deal with an addiction. Count your lucky stars.
If our economy continues going down the toilet, sir, you may yet have the privilege of joining the rest of us down here in the engine room. Pray you don’t have to.
WE NEED TO CODDLE THE RICH SOME MORE, ACCORDING TO TRUMPER’S
In 1980 the top 1% earned 8.5% of total income.
In 2007 they earned 23%.
In 2024 it’s 26.3%
In 1980 the bottom 90% earned 68% of total income.
In 2007 they earned 53%.
In 2024 it’s 47.4%
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal…
MAYBE JUST MAYBE, DECIDE GOOD GOV’T POLICY FOR THE BOTTOM 90% OF US? Hint The Orange One and Leon Tesla aint cutting it!
When I look around San Luis Obispo, and see numerous fashionable and pricy bistros, bars and clubs, lots of expensive luxury cars, impressive homes, people at the airport on their way to expensive vacations, and so forth, I have difficulty seeing most people having a problem with “affordability”. I just see people resenting others who have even more, and wishing that it was them.
John D:
You think that same principle doesn’t apply to the rich? They want more too and have the power to extract it out of the rest of us.
Downtown SLO seems to have a business go under every week. Do you even bother to look at the headlines? Every economic metric is collapsing and the federal agencies in charge of helping the millions of Americans being ground under are being closed.
I’m scared to death every day I wake up and unless you are filthy rich, you should be too. This country is about to collapse and I know you are old enough to remember the Soviet Union collapsing. It was here one day and gone the next. We could be too.
All those shops you see downtown pay minimum wage. Food prices are insane. It’s all falling apart and I ask myself every day, “what’s the point?” The dollar purchases nothing.
You would have to be blind not too see the suffering America’s working class are experiencing. It’s class war and my side has lost. Its people like you that become the class enemy for millions of us. Fascism and corporatism has taken over the Republic.
Stop watching Bloomberg, do you really think they are going to provide the perspective of this country’s poor, underemployed, or unemployed? Look deeper, John. Take your blinders off, or at least get off the golf course. We are in serious excrement.
Elon Musk and Trump are going to take our social security and Medicare, for many, it’s all we have. Musk isn’t even American. Musk is Trump’s Rasputin, and we all know what happen to the Romanovs. History will repeat itself, sir. Better get on the right side.