Nickel and Dimed Pg 109 by Barbara Ehrenreigh Lyrics
THE PROBLEM OF RENTS IS EASY FOR A NONECONOMIST, EVEN A sparsely
educated low-wage worker, to grasp: it's the market, stupid. When the rich and the poor
compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance. The rich can
always outbid them, buy up their tenements or trailer parks, and replace them with
condos, McMansions, golf courses, or whatever they like. Since the rich have become
more numerous, thanks largely to rising stock prices and executive salaries, the poor have
necessarily been forced into housing that is more expensive, more dilapidated, or more
distant from their places of work. Recall that in Key West, the trailer park convenient to
hotel jobs was charging $625 a month for a half-size trailer, forcing low-wage workers to
search for housing farther and farther away in less fashionable keys. But rents were also
skyrocketing in the touristically challenged city of Minneapolis, where the last bits of
near-affordable housing lie deep in the city, while job growth has occurred on the city's
periphery, next to distinctly unaffordable suburbs. Insofar as the poor have to work near
the dwellings of the rich-as in the case of so many service and retail jobs-they are stuck
with lengthy commutes or dauntingly expensive housing.
If there seems to be general complacency about the low-income housing crisis, this is
partly because it is in no way reflected in the official poverty rate, which has remained
for the past several years at a soothingly low 13 percent or so. The reason for the
disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and "poverty," as officially
defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of
taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this
number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least compared with rent. In the
early 1960s, when this method of calculating poverty was devised, food accounted for 24
percent of the average family budget (not 33 percent even then, it should be noted) and
housing 29 percent. In 1999, food took up only 16 percent of the family budget, while
110 NICKEL AND DIMED
housing had soared to 37 percent.
educated low-wage worker, to grasp: it's the market, stupid. When the rich and the poor
compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance. The rich can
always outbid them, buy up their tenements or trailer parks, and replace them with
condos, McMansions, golf courses, or whatever they like. Since the rich have become
more numerous, thanks largely to rising stock prices and executive salaries, the poor have
necessarily been forced into housing that is more expensive, more dilapidated, or more
distant from their places of work. Recall that in Key West, the trailer park convenient to
hotel jobs was charging $625 a month for a half-size trailer, forcing low-wage workers to
search for housing farther and farther away in less fashionable keys. But rents were also
skyrocketing in the touristically challenged city of Minneapolis, where the last bits of
near-affordable housing lie deep in the city, while job growth has occurred on the city's
periphery, next to distinctly unaffordable suburbs. Insofar as the poor have to work near
the dwellings of the rich-as in the case of so many service and retail jobs-they are stuck
with lengthy commutes or dauntingly expensive housing.
If there seems to be general complacency about the low-income housing crisis, this is
partly because it is in no way reflected in the official poverty rate, which has remained
for the past several years at a soothingly low 13 percent or so. The reason for the
disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and "poverty," as officially
defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of
taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this
number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least compared with rent. In the
early 1960s, when this method of calculating poverty was devised, food accounted for 24
percent of the average family budget (not 33 percent even then, it should be noted) and
housing 29 percent. In 1999, food took up only 16 percent of the family budget, while
110 NICKEL AND DIMED
housing had soared to 37 percent.