Reporting on the National Low Income Housing Coalition‘s 2012 rankings, Elahe Izadi of DCentric writes that “the DC-metro area is an expensive place to live, but it isn’t the priciest of places.” San Francisco tops the list, followed by the Stamford-Norwalk metro area in Connecticut and Honolulu, Hawaii; the greater Washington area is in the 10th spot.
In order to afford a “a fair market, two-bedroom apartment in DC” ($1,506/month), and thus spend only 30% of his or her income on rent, the renter would need to earn $60,240 annually or $28.96 per hour for a 40-hour week. But as Izadi points out, the median income for DC renters is less than two-thirds of that.