Probably not a surprise to most of us, but the big city is Tokyo.
Two full-time workers earning Tokyo’s minimum wage can comfortably afford the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in six of the city’s 23 wards. By contrast, two people working minimum-wage jobs cannot afford the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in any of the 23 counties in the New York metropolitan area.
I cant even imagine how much better NYC or LA would be if a couple could afford housing on a minimum wage job.
Regarding NYC and LA, I think this is true. Both are absurdly priced. But I really feel like these studies/articles forget about Chicago.
Not saying it’s in the same category as Tokyo (40 million metro vs 9 million metro,) but it undeniably has a strong, cosmopolitan, city-vibe. As someone who lives in NYC, Chicago is a really strong contender that I think bests many other east coast cities in terms of how cosmopolitan it is. The city isn’t perfect and has its issues, but I have (millennial) cousins who were actually able to buy multi-bedroom condos in the city for reasonable prices (in nice areas, too.)
That being said, I have made the choice to stay in NYC and suffer the consequences of my decision lol. But Chicago is often forgotten about when it shouldn’t be.
I love Chicago, and wish I still lived there. But the Chicago doesnt face the sort of demand that NYC or LA face. The City of Chicago has much less people today than 100 years ago, and pretty much all of West LA is filled with people that moved from Chicago.
This is an interesting metric, I’d be fascinated to see it for other major global cities.
I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation that two full-time minimum wage workers over the age of 23 in the UK would earn £2,820 a month (gross of tax) between them. If the general rule of thumb for affordability is to spend 30% of gross income on rent then this would equate to an £846 budget for monthly rent.
That strikes me as an astonishingly low number for London. London publishes this data (at a postcode level rather than at the level of the 32 boroughs) which substantiate that there are only a few Outer London postcodes where the average rent is below £1,500 - suggesting we’re very likely to be in the same bucket as NY on this measure.
We need to just build stuff.
In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, the city has added more housing units than the total number of units in New York City. It has remained affordable by becoming the world’s largest city. It has become the world’s largest city by remaining affordable
Tl;dr - build! Who’d have thought it?
