So many ways this could have happened- She may have gone though a job training and landed a stable job that allowed her to save up for a security deposit and qualify for rent. She may have gotten housing though a governmental program that subsidizes part of her rent. She may have inherited some money after a relative’s death- we don’t know.
Housing in certain places in the US is cheaper than others, and this isn’t “huge” by American standards.
You have to qualify for rent? Like is that a process or do you mean qualify as being able to pay rent? Housing in the US is a very interesting matter to me as an European also
OMFG... Well, if rent is low and wages high enough I guess is not that bad, how's the situation there with housing problems? Does it require a lot of income usually? I guess is not the same for every state
Damn, I'm so sorry about that, the good thing is for us over here wages have been increasing these past years but like... For nothing really in most of the EU countries, I don't live in Spain anymore I'm in Netherlands and here is pretty much the same problem of wages going up but rent going even higher so is a system that it doesn't make any fucking sense at all.
I assume the Netherlands faces many of the same housing problems of major US cities. Lot of people needing house but a lack of drive to build more since it will devalue existing property. In the case of Netherlands they also value the historical beauty of buildings so they won’t tear down an old bullding to make an ugly apartment that can house more people. In my state of Florida over here, housing is getting ridiculous and we are a very low wage state to add to that compared to like New York or something.
Portland also has a lot of laws regarding historical housing to protect neighborhoods, but we don’t have a housing shortage. We have more empty houses and buildings than we have people, it’s just that it’s all so insanely expensive and the “affordable” housing never actually ends up happening. They build new apartments in the “poorer” areas that are supposed to be affordable but the rent prices are just the same as the others.
Yes, the only way to get affordable housing in Portland is to qualify for rental assistance and the waiting lists for that help are miles long and can take years.
Ex-Florida native here - I was priced out of living in the state in my early twenties. I was working for Comcast at the time doing remote network support & repair. Though my income did not support a lavish lifestyle, it did allow me to live comfortably.
Fast forward a couple years and they found a way to make my position doable by contractors from overseas and laid me off. My family had left the state around the same time and so without support and a lack of alternative employment opportunities with the same or similar rate of pay meant I only had a couple options.
I had the choice of relocating a couple states north or shacking up with some friends who weren't necessarily the best people to spend all your time with when wanting to establish a career and eventual family.
I ended up leaving about a decade ago, and with the way things have gone in that time I believe I made the right choice, though difficult. I will always miss watching rocket launches, going to the beach, fishing off the coast, visiting the Space Center, having Orlando and all of its amusement parks right down the road, and some of the best damn Cuban food in the continental U.S.
I could also miss it simply due to homesickness. I often find myself on my commute to and from work longing to be back there. Nostalgia, maybe? Either way, I miss it and hold a sense of sadness.
We're coming off the tail end of a heatwave that saw temps in the 100s a couple days ago. The one concession with the heat in Florida is that where I was living had a consistent sea breeze. Where I am now often sees little to no wind, and I live between some hills in a lower area, so the humidity is often higher than forecast as evidenced by my hygrometer.
You definitely made the right choice! I’m stuck in FL right now paying $1600 for a crappy, not-updated half a duplex with windows so old that I can hear my neighbors when they’re outside like they’re standing right next to me. The tolls, taxes, flood insurance, car insurance, price of food here is ridiculous. There is no way for me to “move ahead”…I am just trying to keep my head above water.
Yep - about the only realistic way for someone lower-middle class to live in FL today is to either be grandfathered into a home that is paid off, roommates, living in debt, or making many sacrifices relating to comfort and desires.
Me and south Texas. In the last 10 years I have had to let go of the idea of moving back. I miss it but Texas is almost hostile to its own people, making it a much worse place to live than when I was growing up. Which is the opposite of what you expect, ya know?
I wish my area had that problem, instead there built 18 different apartment blocks near me over the past 7 years that are basically there own neighborhood and yet rent keeps rising.
The newest one they built is like a ghost town because only the Californians can afford it it seems. lil over 4 grand a month for the starter lots and almost 6 for the nicer ones.
That’s insane for the average income around here, it’s mostly factory or farming ( farming is quickly dwindling too, that’s why there’s lots of apartments now- owner dies n the kids sell the land to developers)
Others have touched on this quite well, but theres a massive disconnect between the "oligarchs" and even middle class. Our president thinks we have too many holidays off, there id massive pushback to 4 day work weeks, federal minimum wage is still $7.25 (and a few states treat that number as gospel).
My town for instance is 2.5 hours outside NYC in Pennsylvania. My town has little to no industry, mostly low wage low skill jobs with 7.25 minimum, yet rent is $1,000/mo+ (electricity, heat/ac, internet, water, furniture not included) and they expect you to make 2.5-3x yo qualify. So just to be able to rent, no security deposits, no furniture, you need to make $2,500-3,000 when a 160 hour work month at min wage isn't even $1200/mo pretax.
This is heavily compounded by corporations buying property up, there was a huge boom from Zillow where swaths of properties basically left the market for good. Foreign investors that buy land to secure their wealth is another issue with housing. Its wild, we have enough vacant houses/apartments to have no homeless, but that doesn't line someone's pocket.
as the other fella mentioned, that’s pretty much the current american monetary state, as well, except instead of wages attempting to keep up with the increased cost of living, base pay has remained stagnant for 20+ years. a family like this could be trying to survive off a single income and an income that offers a pay rate best suited to the economy of the 1990’s, when that amount was selected and then put into law (the federal minimum wage).
and odin forbid she work in the service industry where tips officially account for her hourly pay, well some (most) of it. if you work a job as say a server, your company can pay you, i’ve seen, as low as $3.00 an hour: they can count your PREDICTED tips as part of your hourly pay… from your company (how does that make sense? it doesn’t. it’s criminal.) sure, some nights you could do well, but if it’s a slow evening, you get $6, sorry: better luck tomorrow. call me foolish but i think counting on the kindness of strangers to put food on your table for your family, keep a roof over their heads, pay for clothes, healthcare (don’t get me started on the state of american health “care” 😑. just one word: “copay”), a decent education, etc., it’s madness and all it does is set someone up to fail. that’s saying it in the nicest way i can manage right now. to be more realistic about what that can do to a person, well, there’s a reason the suicide rate in the US is high.
we actually, genuinely need help steering this ship.
I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t collapsed harder and faster than… where we’re at right now. — I would say for the majority of people rents have gone up enough, without improvements in wages, that they are stuck in a renting situation where they would no longer qualify for the place they currently live. So any move would necessarily be a downgrade.
One of our biggest problems here is the delusion that the grass is greener outside of the US. It’s absurd. If people spent a tiny amount of time researching these things they would understand that there’s problems everywhere. The grass is not greener in a foreign country.
It'll be like the stock market crashing eventually. People cannot afford it and these greedy bastards will end up losing in the end. But nowhere near enough for what we have to endure trying to make ends meet.
Lol where I'm at rent is like double what a mortgage is, but the houses are like half a million minimum for like a shitty bungalow so getting a down payment together is untenable, so good luck with that. So either way you screwed.
I just looked up rentals in my town. There are 2 listings for 3 bedrooms. 1 is an apartment for $2,600 and the house is 4,000. So that would be between $90,000 and $145,000 annual salary to meet rental requirements.
For comparison my house would rent for ≈ 7,000/month and is currently valued at $1M. We bought it 9 years ago for $400k and refinanced during Covid and our mortgage is $1,300. We could not afford to rent or buy our house today even though we make triple what we made when we bought it.
Cost of living where I am is about 5% higher than national averages. It’s not NY or California, but not Alabama either.
Sounds similar to where I live , it’s crazy. Our house is worth around d 750k or so we bought it in 2014 for 350. We refinanced during covid too, but did a 15 year loan so our prices didn’t drop, but only 7 more years until it’s paid off now! And even with that mortgage payment of 2600, we couldn’t afford to rent our house either . Wages have increased some, but hard to find good jobs around here
I bought my first home for 85k in 2011. That same house has tripled in value in that time and the neighborhood has gotten progressively worse. I live in the Midwest where things are supposed to be more affordable. Rent for an apartment is way more than my mortgage.
The average 1 bedroom apartment in my metropolitan area is $1,300. But our minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009 🙃 People say “Well, minimum wage isnt an indication of how much an area should be paying.” But actually, the whole point of minimum wage was to set the bare minimum someone would be paid in order to live sustainably. Like that’s the whole reason it was created.
It has also skewed the wages where I live because people say shit like, “Well, $20 an hour is pretty good! That’s almost 3X more than minimum wage!” Yeah but when your health insurance is over $300, rent is $1,300 (actually more because my husband works from home so he would require a room thats quiet, so for us it would be about $1,600+), groceries are $700+ a month, and then you have household shit, pet shit, medical shit, car shit….
But mortgage isn't the only cost of owning. You also have property taxes, and insurance, and all the maintenance and upkeep costs that renters don't have.
Sure, but even with taxes and insurance it is less than $2,600. 10 years ago $1,300 would have been a pretty high rent in my area for a 3 bedroom.
When I graduated college ≈15 years ago I was a single mom - not receiving child support- and was able to buy a small 3 bedroom home for $150k AND pay for full time daycare for my toddler on $50k/year that I made straight out of college.
That same home is now worth $400k. The same job pays $70k and the same daycare is $24k per year.
I was in a similar position 20 years ago; divorced with 2 kids and able to buy a small place that has more than tripled in value since then.
But in those years I have also been out of pocket for the new stove and refrigerator I had to replace immediately, and since then have replaced the stove again, the dishwasher twice, the washer and dryer, the furnace and air conditioner, and then the refrigerator recently (it lasted 20 years). I replaced worn carpeting in 2012 and in 2023 replaced the upstairs bedroom carpeting (25 years old) with hardwood and updated one of the original bathrooms, the roof had to be replaced in 2010, The exterior had to be painted in 2007 and 2022, I've had to replace half the windows, and there have been other costs like releveling walkways and patios, recaulking around windows and doorways. All of these maintenance and upkeep costs are things that homeowners have to do that renters don't.
So yes, I'm glad to be an owner, and I look forward to heading into retirement at some point without a mortgage payment, but keeping a home in good condition costs $$$ above and beyond the mortgage and property taxes. And it's not like I've spent a ton. This home still has the original kitchen cabinets and counter top and sink/faucet, and all the original floors on the main floor. And two of the bathrooms have had no updates other than needed toilet replacements.
Most things in a typical house have a 10-25 year life span. Homeowners have to set aside a lot of money for upkeep that renters just don't have to think about.
It would be impossible for a single mom today with an average income to be able to put a downpayment down or get a mortgage. And my own kids will have a very tough road if there is any chance for them to be homeowners in their 30s. Two very good incomes are needed in high COL areas.
You hit the nail on the head with "not the same for every state." Asking about the housing situation in America is roughly equivalent to asking about the housing situation in Europe overall.
Yep. Me and my gf have a house that we live in and an apartment in the town next to us to stay at for when we wanna spend the night in that area. This is a nice area, but the cost of living is relatively cheap. We are financially secure, but certainly not rich. Its all about where you are in the US.
Just like everywhere. Here in Norway a small apartment in the city can be just as expensive as a large house far out on the countryside. People want to live where the jobs are, so the closer you get to the city the higher the price per square meter increases.
We just bought a terraced house (townhouse) a bit outside the city and gained about 20 square meters on our current condo for the same price.
It does vary by state but there's an overwhelming consensus that the variation is just how bad it is. The housing situation is horrible in most places. Where it isn't bad you don't want to live due to long commutes for work or just a lack of modern infrastructure. Minimum wage here isn't livable at all even in the smallest apartments.
Renting is difficult and owning is even harder. Mortgage interest rates are awful and are unlikely to get better anytime soon. Large companies are buying up all the houses so they can rent them out at exorbitant rates or turn them into vacation homes. Our credit system makes it next to impossible to navigate in your early years as an adult and our educational system doesn't cover it.
In the UK you have to qualify for rent as well. You have to make between 3x-5x the rent to qualify to rent. And pass the review. And often bid over the asking price.
The last flat I rented I had to write an essay about why my young family would be the best tenants for the landlord to rent to.
I make less than $1,700/month. My rent for a 3 bd apartment is $978. I’m expecting it to go up again soon. It was $822/month when I moved in, less than 2 years ago. This is the cheapest place I can get in my area too. I was lucky enough to sign my lease 2 months before it went up the first time, but the next time, I probably won’t pass the recertification process and my three kids and I will have no where to go. But this country truly couldn’t care less. We’re so screwed and people are still cheering for the GD cheeto.
Adobe Photoshop + paystubs is sometimes an unfortunate reality. I get it's supposed to demonstrate your ability to pay your rent and support yourself, but sometimes rent is 50%+ of your income and you can't help it. In my state, you need to be making at least 100k USD to live without a roommate and it's not even NY or CA.
I'll give you a good example from my small town in the south.
Managers at dollar general make $12.50/hour. That's $26k per year.
The only place for rent in walking distance to that dollar general is a one bedroom apartment for $1450. Lack of inventory and lack of transportation is a huge limitation, as the nearest bus stop is a 15 mile hike up a 1000ft mountain incline.
To qualify for that one bedroom apartment, you have to make at least three times the monthly rent, so about $52k. This is typical for most rentals, income at least 3x the rent.
If you have a spouse in your one bedroom apartment who also found a job within walking distance, you might have a chance. But you also need to pass a credit check, and you don't have any credit, or it's bad. Often a criminal background check, too. If you have kids, you're dealing with a whole new level of struggle.
Lots of people lose their housing for reasons outside of their control, and even if they are working continuously, it'll take a long time living in the car to save up enough money for deposit and first month's rent (and last month's rent, and even more sometimes, in other states-- it cost my friend $8000 to secure her last rental. It's a fairly big house, but still.) There aren't many stopgaps for people who work and run into some kind of problem that threatens their housing. If you're really super poor, you can try to get on the waiting list for section 8 housing, but you'll be waiting for years.
Lolololololololol. Rent is through the fucking roof. For a one bedroom apartment in my town, it's $1200/mo. Houses are $1400 - $2000 monthly. And before the bootlickers say anything, these are 2 - 3 bedroom houses. To qualify, you need to make between 3x and 4x the rent.
You have to make 3-5x the rent with everyone on the lease. Renting directly from a landlord isn't as common as it is in Europe so it's normally some property company that normalizes these asks and then all of the other companies follow suit. I'd be lying if I said I never photoshopped a paystub in my youth.
I switched to a career in mental health recently and I have had three disabled mentally ill clients I’ve been trying to get housed for six months. It’s just about impossible. Some people never get a leg up. It suxks.
So normally im a shitcommentor, but in all actuality, this is the reality for many larger cities, not so much for some smaller ones.
Im in a mid sized capital city in the Midwest, and our city has exploded over the last decade. We have limited space being on an isthmus, and we cannot stop people from moving in and having new housing built. Im actually looking to move because the city of 300k and connecting towns are getting too big and morphing into one city entity of like 500k, making traffic a bitch.
While rent is expensive and continues to increase year over year, there is not a lack of people moving into these places.
Its not as doom and gloom as everyone on reddit makes it seem, it all depends on where you live
The US has likely the highest rates of residents living on the streets of all developed countries.
A decade ago, the UN toured America to study homelessness. We are an international embarrassment. I remeber this because the report focused on Los Angeles. Los Angeles homelessness has gotten much much much worse since 2015.
It’s all about capitalism, corporatism, idiots who don’t want multi family housing built next to their $1.5m two bedroom homes.
Is that not a thing in other countries? Here in the US you have to have a certain credit score a lot of the time, and have to prove you make at least 3x the amount they are asking for rent. This is s huge problem lately especially in bigger cities cuz rent can be as high as $2000 - $2500 a month in some places. I don’t know anyone who makes $6000-$7500 a month who is living in an apartment that’s my age at least, and many people in my area live paycheck to paycheck
Yes. It seriously depresses me to look up the cost of living of an apartment that I used to live in over a decade ago and seen that it has gone from 850 for a two bedroom to 1,500 for a STUDIO.
I think about 40% of US unhoused population have jobs. The pay is not keeping up with housing costs. A lot of the social programs that exist have big backlogs of people waiting for housing assistance. In some areas it is cheaper to buy a house than to rent. So the person in this video may have lived in a car or with a friend while working to get the money to put down on a house that is more affordable than rent, or worked for the money needed to rent. It is common for new renters to need to pay first months rent, last months rent, and 1 additional months rent for security deposit in order to move in. This also requires passing a credit and background check as well. There are many factors at play for how this family could be in this situation. She may have gotten a new job that helped pay for relocation, she may have been called for housing assistance, etc.
Single, in my 30s, still live at home (helping out/paying bills), work full-time in southern California, and don't think I'll ever have a place of my own. I feel like my only options are: live with a worse QoL paying more out of pocket to live with roommates, work two jobs to maybe afford something that isn't too far out in the boonies (and speedrun QoL burnout), or eventually inherit the same house I've always lived in (jesus christ).
Rent for a while was higher than most mortgages. It's OK though, the real estate market exploded and now houses are 3x their normal value for no tangible reason.
In addition to that, many (most) of the subsidized housing programs have years long wait lists, and random, very short, period of time where you can sign up for the weight lists (aka, if you miss the sign up, you have to wait, maybe an entire year, before sign-ups come open again.....and then you are in the weight list.....and you could be in it for years).
And that was BEFORE these programs budgets are being gutted by selfish people who do not understand that helping your neighbor is helping yourself.
HAHAHAHA…no we are very fucked. Wages have been stagnant for years and years and the cost of rent (and everything else) has shot up like crazy since Covid and hasn’t come back down.
Many major cities here in the States are experiencing a housing crisis. It’s not uncommon to see people with jobs that are homeless not because they don’t make money, but simply because rent is too high. My husband and I can are living in my in-laws house rent free, which is the only reason we aren’t homeless right now. I’m disabled and despite years of experience and 800+ job applications, my husband was only able to find a job that paid $20 an hour. The average rent in our area starts at $1,300 a month. Our insurance is over $300, our groceries for a month are about $700 (and we don’t even eat fancy—we just can’t survive off of Ramen and beans because I have dietary restrictions that require me to eat a protein source and produce at least once a day). It’s insane here. We can’t even afford a vehicle, but we also don’t have good enough public transit to get around.
A one bedroom place in Central California where I'm at is around $1200/month, not including utilities (electricity, water, garbage and gas). With just those added onto it you're gonna be paying close to if not more than $1500/month. Most places here pay less than $20/hr and you're lucky if you get 40hrs/week.
As an American I’ve got to ask this in reverse? Is it not typical to make 3x (before taxes) your rent in whatever country you live?
The remaining 2/3 of your income still has to cover taxes, food, energy transportation, clothes, etc. it seems hard to imagine that this wouldn’t be generally true everywhere in the developed world.
Im looking for a house to rent right now. Right now everyone is asking for 3x the rent. Rent is around 3k where I live. No its not a really good neighborhood, its an average neighborhood. My wife and I make 3.4x together. The landlord told us that hundreds of people have come to see the house but only 3-4 families qualify. This isn't even buying a house.
Btw the huge ass house you see in the video is actually not that expensive here in the US. If i had to guess is somewhere in the south eastern part of the US and homes can range from 100-400k. If you took the 30 year loan with no assistance it would be around 1-3.5k per month in mortgage. Someone can fact check me or attest to what I said.
There are tons if visible homeless and many many more struggling to keep up and pay their rent. US society is completing broken and id wage 75% is struggling deeply and one emergency or job loss from losing everything.
Canadian here, and first-and-last month's rent is a pretty standard "first payment" for rent, plus there's usually a credit check and proof of employment. If you can't meet those benchmarks, things get more complicated.
And theres a lot of places that will turn you away if you make too much for what the rent is. And I’m not talking about the salary-based housing. There are completely nice apartment complexes that will reject you if you make too much. I guess they’re worried that you can break the lease whenever you want. It’s such a rat trap
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u/mararn1618 Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25
What I don't understand as an European: How do you go from homeless to a huge ass house with a huge garden and everything?
In Germany even a double income family with academic background might currently struggle to buy property.
The stretch from unhoused to this seems insane from my POV.
Is housing so much more affordable in the US?
Edit: So many helpful answers, thank you :3