The US City Too Expensive to Live In

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 22, 9:45AM EDT

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The US City Too Expensive to Live In — © RoschetzkyIstockPhoto / Getty Images

As has been the case for decades, some cities are much more expensive than others. These have tended to be on America’s coasts, including Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. A new study shows cities where low-income people can barely afford housing at all. At the head of the list is Santa Cruz, Calif. (These are America’s 25 least affordable housing markets.)
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“Out of Reach” from the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that “The 2023 national Housing Wage is $28.58 per hour for a modest two-bedroom rental home and $23.67 for a modest one-bedroom rental home.” The figure is three times the national minimum wage and about 50% more than the higher hourly wage some states require. Based on either figure, housing is costly for people who live in some cities.
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Santa Cruz home prices are so high that it would require a wage of $63.33 an hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment in the city. In San Francisco, the figure is $61.31, and in San Jose, $56.56. Salinas comes in at $51.44 and Santa Marina at $51.29. Most of these are clustered in the same geographic area in California. California is also the most expensive of all states at $42.45.

By contrast, the state with the lowest hourly wage to cover the rent of a two-bedroom apartment is Arkansas at $16.27.
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To be reasonable, the report’s authors wrote, the high cost of living in these cities often means higher wages. However, a price above $50 is unlikely to make housing affordable. According to the report, “In no state, metropolitan area, or county in the U.S. can a worker earning the federal or prevailing state or local minimum wage afford a modest two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent by working a standard 40-hour work week.”
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These are the most expensive cities to live in:

Santa Cruz, Calif. ($63.33)
San Francisco, Calif. ($61.31)
San Jose, Calif. ($56.56)
Salinas, Calif. ($51.44)
Santa Maria, Calif. ($51.29)
Boston, Mass. ($50.67)
Stamford, Conn. ($49.29)
Santa Ana, Calif. ($48.83)
Seattle, Wash. ($47.21)
New York, N.Y. ($47.13)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.