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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada, @vague-humanoid

Minimum Wage should be indexed to 2% of a city’s median rent.

And here’s why:

Housing costs are the single biggest financial burden facing Americans today.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development define being cost-burdened as spending more than a third of your income on rent. By that definition, over half of the households in this country are cost-burdened. Source

If we want people to be able to afford to live in cities and not get priced out, we have to make a two pronged approach. One is to build houses towards all incomes and price ranges, not just luxury condos. And the other is a robust wage floor so people can actually afford to live.

Fight for 15 is doing an amazing job and I love them, but we have to realize that is quite a few places, $15/hr still isn’t enough to live on.

Which is where the 2% comes in. It allows a minimum wage that is flexible with regards to the costs of living.

And it wasn’t plucked out of thin air either:

Rent should be a third of a persons income, or to restate the equation: income should be three times a person’s rent.

And since a full time job is 8 hrs a day / 40 hrs a week / 160 hrs a month.

So when you do the math, the ideal hourly minimum wage as a percentage of rent works out to around 1.875%, which for ease of calculation is 2%.

Example minimum wages under a 2% rent rule:

https://globalnews.ca/news/3609431/new-record-2090-a-month-is-average-cost-of-one-bedroom-rental-in-vancouver/

Not quite as staggering as San Francisco, but Vancouver’s housing crisis is still glaring.

@allthecanadianpolitics

I currently live in Boulder. The average apartment costs $1800.The minimum wage would have to be about $36/hr. In Denver it would be about $30.18/hour

god do i feel underpaid now (in nyc)

Well yeah, I live in Denver, and you CANNOT find a studio apartment, even in the cheapest neighborhood in town for under $800-$900/month. I’ve tried. When you combine that with health insurance, gas/car insurance (which you are required to have), and food, it gets pretty pricey. I work 40 hours a week at $11/hr (which is well above the city’s minimum wage). After taxes I make roughly $1200-1300/month. I have student loans to pay off and transition-related expenses 2 times a month in addition to all the other necessary expenses (including mental health medication). So I’m still living with my parents because I can’t afford to live in Denver otherwise.

I’m an unmarried, childless, able-bodied adult. I’m making several dollars above minimum wage at a full-time job and I can’t afford to live in Denver. For a single parent with even one kid, $30.18/hr is a pretty conservative estimate for what it would take to live here and support a kid.

*looks at amounts for Vancouver, BC and for Calgary, AB*

Huh. No wonder I could never get ahead when I was living either place. I was making between $10 and $15 per hour for my contact hours with the kids I was working with. Any planning and prep was unpaid. And when I was working for the church (secretary) in Calgary I was making the equivalent of just over $15 per hour (assuming I only worked 40 hours per week, which sometimes was accurate and sometimes it was less but a lot of the time it was more). I made about the same when I was working on-site at the place I edit for now.

I make more per hour now, even when something takes me ridiculously long to edit. But I’m not working anywhere near full-time, either. And we don’t need my income in order to get through the month. And we own our land.

Minimum Wage should be indexed to 2% of a city’s median rent.

And here’s why:

Housing costs are the single biggest financial burden facing Americans today.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development define being cost-burdened as spending more than a third of your income on rent. By that definition, over half of the households in this country are cost-burdened. Source

If we want people to be able to afford to live in cities and not get priced out, we have to make a two pronged approach. One is to build houses towards all incomes and price ranges, not just luxury condos. And the other is a robust wage floor so people can actually afford to live.

Fight for 15 is doing an amazing job and I love them, but we have to realize that is quite a few places, $15/hr still isn’t enough to live on.

Which is where the 2% comes in. It allows a minimum wage that is flexible with regards to the costs of living.

And it wasn’t plucked out of thin air either:

Rent should be a third of a persons income, or to restate the equation: income should be three times a person’s rent.

And since a full time job is 8 hrs a day / 40 hrs a week / 160 hrs a month.

So when you do the math, the ideal hourly minimum wage as a percentage of rent works out to around 1.875%, which for ease of calculation is 2%.

Example minimum wages under a 2% rent rule:

https://globalnews.ca/news/3609431/new-record-2090-a-month-is-average-cost-of-one-bedroom-rental-in-vancouver/

Not quite as staggering as San Francisco, but Vancouver’s housing crisis is still glaring.

@allthecanadianpolitics

I currently live in Boulder. The average apartment costs $1800.The minimum wage would have to be about $36/hr. In Denver it would be about $30.18/hour

god do i feel underpaid now (in nyc)

Well yeah, I live in Denver, and you CANNOT find a studio apartment, even in the cheapest neighborhood in town for under $800-$900/month. I’ve tried. When you combine that with health insurance, gas/car insurance (which you are required to have), and food, it gets pretty pricey. I work 40 hours a week at $11/hr (which is well above the city’s minimum wage). After taxes I make roughly $1200-1300/month. I have student loans to pay off and transition-related expenses 2 times a month in addition to all the other necessary expenses (including mental health medication). So I’m still living with my parents because I can’t afford to live in Denver otherwise.

I’m an unmarried, childless, able-bodied adult. I’m making several dollars above minimum wage at a full-time job and I can’t afford to live in Denver. For a single parent with even one kid, $30.18/hr is a pretty conservative estimate for what it would take to live here and support a kid.

*looks at amounts for Vancouver, BC and for Calgary, AB*

Huh. No wonder I could never get ahead when I was living either place. I was making between $10 and $15 per hour for my contact hours with the kids I was working with. Any planning and prep was unpaid. And when I was working for the church (secretary) in Calgary I was making the equivalent of just over $15 per hour (assuming I only worked 40 hours per week, which sometimes was accurate and sometimes it was less but a lot of the time it was more). I made about the same when I was working on-site at the place I edit for now.

I make more per hour now, even when something takes me ridiculously long to edit. But I’m not working anywhere near full-time, either. And we don’t need my income in order to get through the month. And we own our land.