Afflicting The Afflicted

From the lefty playbook; compare apples to distributor caps, then use the results to give ones’ supporters the sense of victimizaiton that, you hope, will keep them chanting on cue.

So with this bit from the City Pages:

Minnesotans who can’t afford their rent outnumber those who can, according to a new study released today, landing us dead last in a ranking of affordable housing markets in the Midwest.

The statement is…well, just wierd.

Over half of Minnesotans can’t afford rent?

Rent…where?

Which half of Minnesotans?

Don’t worry – the point isn’t about thinking:

The National Low Income Housing Coalition released numbers today showing that Minnesotans need to be making, on average, $15.79 an hour in order to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment. Most of us are not.

Well, yeah – most of “us” do, if by “us” you mean Minnesotans, who according to the Census have a median income of $56955 a year.

That’s only part of it, of course:

  • For 2-person families, it’s $ 61,457.  That’s about $30 an hour (our two incomes at $15-ish per hour)
  • for 3-person families, $74,371 – AKA $37 an hour (or two incomes at $18.50)
  • 4-person families’ median incomes in Minnesota are $86,099.
  • 5-person families average 83,143 – if you’re following along with the math, that’s like $42/hour, or two incomes at around $21.  But there we’re getting into three-bedroom apartment material.

Maybe by “us” the author, Jessica Lussenhop, means 20-something freelance “writers” who are trying to eke out a living at the City Pages.

The study considers paying up to 30 percent of one’s income on rent to be “affordable,” and the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $821 a month. The number crunchers figured you need to make $15.79 an hour to make that work, but the mean wage in the state is only $11.61. That means about 55 percent of us are paying more than we can afford on rent.

If “55 percent of us” are living alone on $11 an hour in a two bedroom apartment, then 55 percent of us are too dumb to be living on their own for long.

You’re you’re working for $11 an  hour, how about moving into a one-bedroom place?  Or getting a roommate ($22 an hour between you; plenty of money for that fabled two-bedroom apartment)?

In the metro area, the average rent skews higher for a two-bedroom–about $924 a month–and vacancy rates are at an all-time low of 3 percent. But the least affordable counties in the state are Winona and Aitkin Counties, and the problem is worst in the greater state.

“Rents tend to be cheaper, but there’s a real shortage of good affordable rental housing,” says Minnesota Housing Partnership researcher Leigh Rosenberg.

Their “data

The goal of the study, of course, is to create the impression that the average Minnesotan can’t afford to live in Minneosota – presumably without government subsidies.

24 thoughts on “Afflicting The Afflicted

  1. “Maybe by “us” the author, Jessica Lussenhop, means 20-something freelance “writers” who are trying to eke out a living at the City Pages.”

    This is a key point. After hearing about a couple of freelance writers that are suing Ariana Huffington for not paying for articles contributed on HuffPo, I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t the norm of many lefty leaning publications. When questioned about the suit, Huffington arrogantly stated that the contributors essentially should be honored o be part of her empire. Like most left nuts, she rails against conservatism and capitalism, yet she profits from it while stomping on her peons!

    On a slightly related note, stories have been leaking out of human dog pile Michael Moore’s camp for months that he is cheap, refusing to pay union scale wages and treats his peons like crap.

  2. Maybe Minnesota is too “high end” for silly folks. I recommend they get directly and personally in touch with a “happy to pay for a better *” sugar daddy/mommy and work something out.

  3. I wanna live in a nice big house on Lake Minnetonka…wah…wah…wah…its too expensive for me…wah…wah…wah…its not affordable…boo..hoo…must have more of YOUR money for ME!

  4. The writer is nothing but another 20-something little cry-baby, who graduated college with some useless degree (try: English) and now has to work at Target because they chose a career field that pays ziltch. It too me a good 6 years after college to fight through crummy jobs and long hours to finally start to make a reasonable living.

    Today, though, we have to have instant gratification. “I graduated college! I am ENTITLED to have a great job with great benefits and 6 weeks of vacation! Its MINE!”

  5. Yogi Berra was purported to describe a busy restaurant this way — “no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

    The author of this piece decrying affordable housing sez:

    In the metro area, the average rent skews higher for a two-bedroom–about $924 a month–and vacancy rates are at an all-time low of 3 percent.

    If vacancy rates are at an all-time low, apparently someone can afford the rent.

  6. Exactly, Mr. D. I was thinking if about 55 percent of us are paying more than we can afford on rent and vacancy rates are at an all-time low of 3 percent then either A) there are a lot of people in Section 8 housing, or B) there are a lot of people who have this figured out.

    Now time to line up the obligatory “10,000 homeless children in Minnesota” story.

  7. If Lori Sturdevant can make a living as nothing more than a reliable repeater of the DFL Party talking points, why can’t Jessica Lussenhop be the talking point repeater for the Rent is Too Damn High Party?
    Over the weekend my wife and I found a show on NBC where the surgically svelte Al Roker and the half-starved looking Natalie Morales were doing an NBC News Special on child hood hunger in the US. Morales was interviewing kids who never had breakfast at home and how it was affecting their schoolwork. I am not kidding, every kid she interviewed had multiple chins!
    They interviewed a teacher who claimed that while doing a lesson that involved turning milk into glue, a student said that he would rather have that milk to drink because he didn’t have breakfast that day. Then half the class put their hands up saying they hadn’t had breakfast either. Conveniently the teacher had some cereal in his desk (must have skipped the class on insect infestation) and he wound up feeding most of the class breakfast. Then of course we get the stats (never sourced, never qualified) that 50% of the kids in public school are not fed (whatever that means) prior to coming to school and it is affecting their ability to perform in school and most importantly, on standardized tests.
    And then yesterday I read where times are so tough that the US has doubled the amount it spends on food stamps in the last twenty years. Related? You decide.
    I gave up the idea that news people had any integrity long ago. It’s the fact that they have no shame that is really galling now.

  8. “The writer is nothing but another 20-something little cry-baby, who graduated college with some useless degree (try: English)”

    I always looked at it like Homer Simpson; “Why do I need to learn English? I’m never going to England!” 😉

  9. The full report is here:
    http://www.nlihc.org/oor/oor2010/oor2010pub.pdf
    It was published in June 2010. Why is it news now? It’s a meta-study. That means it is assembled from reams of existing data, rather than from original research. Meta-studies are popular with advocacy groups because A) They are cheap to create, and B) Researchers can pick and choose from data sets to support a predetermined conclusion.
    Journalists seem unable to grasp the idea that all “studies” are not created equal, they treat them as though they were penned by God and delivered by hosts of angels (unless they come from oil or tobacco companies).

  10. Here’s some questions for the “journalists” at City Pages to ask when they are presented with this type of “advertising by press release”:

    -What social science publication will publish this research?
    -Was it subject to peer review?
    -Won’t subsidizing renters drive up the cost of renting?
    -If there is an oversupply of low-rent payers and an undersupply of low-rent housing, why hasn’t the market corrected this imbalance?
    -Your research says that Minneapolis is ranked 28 out of fifty for affordable housing. Why is an average or median grade newsworthy?
    -Your research shows that nearly all of the cities with extremely low supplies of low-rent housing are in cities that pride themselves on their progressive politics, while small and medium sized towns with less progressive politics have more low cost housing. How will more progressive housing policies mitigate the problem of an under supply of low-cost rentals?

  11. Terry,

    Good one! The lefty trolls are going to go batshit trying to figure that out!

  12. Terry, as our friend Dog Gone has proven (repeatedly), liberals don’t answer questions. They make assertions. You racist homophobe.

  13. Believing that Shitty Pages is some sort of credible news source is akin to following and believing the astrology section of said newspaper. Or getting your news from the World Weekly News (and frankly I think they are more credible).

  14. When some people in the Twin Cities think about things, a logical argument for what they want is not in the offing. Check this out:

    http://www.youtube.com/funderscollaborative

    and notice that they rely on “civic faith” (that good things will happen), “disruption” and “uncertainty” are exciting prospects for them (tracking and avoiding past failures is not), and the best thing happens when “good ideas collide”.

    They’re talking about trains.

    More than a dozen foundations are listed at the end who support the Central Corridor. I think it would be beneficial, for everyone, if they focused more on the arts and less on public policy. If LRT is so great, put more tracks and “affordable housing” in _your_ neighborhood. Right now it looks like they simply enjoy meddling in the lives of people poorer (in money and time) than themselves.

  15. That was hilarious, Troy. For a minute I thought it was a parody or maybe a link to the “things white people like” website.
    They couldn’t find a single business person to put on camera, all liberal foundation directors or employees who are proud of the fact that they will work together to rob the public purse, lol.

  16. The scene with the “people of color” learning how to operate earth moving equipment on a simulator while a white supervisor dweeb look approvingly over their shoulder is priceless.

  17. On the one hand, the City of St. Paul is imposing exorbitant building requirements and tearing down foreclosed homes as fast as it can, thus decreasing the supply of cheap houses that could be rented for cheap, forcing people into apartments which dries up supply and pushes up cost.

    On the other hand, the City and various do-gooder groups are building subsidized housing projects to drain tenants away from private rental properties, which reduces their ability to meet the exorbitant building codes and results in private apartments being foreclosed, reducing supply and pushing up cost.

    Affordable housing and decent housing are not mutually exclusive. but you have to be sensible about it, which rules out the City Council, which is why there’s a problem.

  18. Why does nobody on the Saint Paul city council realize they’re doing EXACTLY what made New York utterly unaffordable over the past fifty years?

  19. To be fair mitch, would you not have been hired at any of your past or even your current job if you DIDNT have a degree in English? (minus that one semester you said you were a teacher of course)

  20. If you like the Twin Cities corridor rail projects, you will love the UN’s plans to get the world to use 80% renewable energy by 2050.
    I am not the UN, but I’ve run the numbers. All alternative energy techs are past the peak growth part of the curve and are flattening, and they make up about 8% of current US use. Nuclear and natural gas is where their could be growth if the government would get out of the way.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/05/09/environment-renewable-energy-un.html

    The scariest line from the article:

    The nonbinding scientific policy document is to advise governments as they draw up policies and to help guide the private sector as it considers areas in which to invest.

    This has worked out so well in the past.

  21. Berg, fear not. We still may preserve that potentially dead language called “English”, in which case we will need anthropologists to decipher that odd format we know as “grammar” to interpret what those people were trying to communicate.
    Nouns and verbs and adjectives, oh my!

    As for the “affordable housing” question, don’t you people realize the end game is to force the entire population into high density housing? Don’t you remember the “urban sprawl” meme so popular in the 80s and 90s? Single family dwellings are killing our Mother Earth.

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