Most households in America’s most populous cities can afford no more than 600 square feet of living space — smaller than the average one-bedroom apartment, according to new research from apartment search website RentCafe and census data.
To find what was affordable, The New York Times compared the average rent per square foot in America’s most populous cities, as calculated by RentCafe and the market research firm Yardi Matrix, against the most recent household income data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Using the common guideline that caps rental affordability at no more than 30 percent of a household’s annual income, it showed just how little space urban dwellers can comfortably afford.
New York City’s most populous boroughs — Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, which were considered individually in the study — were found to restrict residents the most. The average New York City household earns about $77,000 a year, enough to afford about 275 square feet worth of apartment space in Manhattan before reaching the 30 percent income threshold. That household can get 100 additional square feet in Brooklyn, and in Queens it can afford 441 square feet.
In Los Angeles (the least affordable place after Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens), the typical household, with a median income of about $80,000, can afford only about 567 square feet of space. Next up was the nation’s third largest city, Chicago, where the average household earns about $74,000 a year and can afford a roughly 588-square-foot apartment without breaking the bank.
The amount of space that’s affordable is simply not enough to accommodate the typical household, which tends to be at least two or three people, according to census data. A one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment is probably most suitable, but according to a separate 2024 RentCafe study, the average sizes of those kinds of apartments have been growing recently, pushing the cost of the space even higher.
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