Milford Area Rents Rising With 2 Jobs Needed For A 2-Bedroom: Report

MILFORD, MA — If you earn more than $66,000 per year, you can most likely afford a two-bedroom apartment in the Milford area comfortably.

But if you're earning at or near minimum wage in Milford, you'd have to work more than 80 hours per week every single day of the year to comfortably afford that same apartment.

That's according to the annual "Out of Reach" report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition released this week. The report compares fair market rents in cities and towns across the U.S. against local median wages to determine the gap between earnings and housing costs.

According to the report, the fair market rent on a two-bedroom in Milford is about $1,660. The report calculated the fair market rent using a U.S. Department of Housing and Development geographic area that includes Milford and 10 other surrounding towns including Blackstone, Berlin, Harvard, Millville, Mendon, Southborough and Upton.

The central figure in the Out of Reach report is the "housing wage" — the amount someone needs to earn per-hour to comfortably afford apartments of different sizes. The report assumes that renters are capped at spending about 30 percent of their income on housing, a standard figure used by the federal government.

In the Milford area, the housing wage is estimated at:

• Studio: $21.38/hour
• 1 Bedroom: $24.29/hour
• 2 Bedroom: $31.98/hour
• 3 Bedroom: $43.35/hour
• 4 Bedroom: $51.56/hour

The report found that Massachusetts is the third least affordable state for renting in the nation. A person working full time at the state's $15 minimum wage could only comfortably afford rent of about $780 per month — $1,000 lower than the fair market rent on average for a one-bedroom in Massachusetts.

Only California and Hawaii have a higher gap between rents and wages, according to the report.

Read the full Out of Reach report on Massachusetts here.