20 20 According to HUD, in the 1940s, the maximum affordable rent for federally subsidized housing was set at 20% of income, which rose to 25% in 1969 and 30% in 1981.
21 21 LEE, C. & RANDALL, C. 2018. Surviving the Waiting Game for Housing Aid. At https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/03/how-section-8-vouchers-work-in-st-louis/554927.
22 22 FMR is based on surveys of rentals that include utilities across the US to determine the average rents for each of about two thousand regions. In 2016, to increase their accuracy, HUD finalized a rule that enabled them to calculate FMR based on small geographic areas defined by zip code. Known as Small Area FMR (SAFMR), this new calculation captures changes across neighborhoods within the area. In 2017, HUD suspended mandatory SAFMRs and made it discretionary. This has led to lawsuits and delayed implementation.
23 23 See https://reports.nlihc.org/oor.
24 24 THRUSH, G. 2018. As Affordable Housing Crisis Grows, HUD Sits on the Sidelines. The New York Times, Sept 19.
25 25 California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
26 26 See https://www.nlc.org/article/2019/05/09/does-your-city-have-access-to-inclusionary-housing.
27 27 CALLIES, D. 2020. Mandatory Set-Asides as Land Development Conditions. The Urban Lawyer, 42/43, 307–29.
28 28 Ibid.
29 29 METCALF, G. 2018. Sand Castles Before the Tide? Affordable Housing in Expensive Cities. American Economic Association, 32, 59–80.
30 30 By contrast, Western European countries have a mix of publicly and privately owned housing. The publicly owned, known as social housing, is cost regulated to meet the needs of both working-class and middle-class families.
31 31 DUTTA-GUPTA, I. 2020. Measuring Poverty: Why It Matters, & What Should & Should Not Be Done About It. Economic Security and Opportunity Initiative. Center on Poverty and Inequality: Georgetown Law. At https://www.georgetownpoverty.org/issues/measuring-poverty-why-it-matters-what-should-should-not-be-done-about-it.
32 32 ALSTON, P. 2018. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States of America. United Nations. At https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1629536?ln=en.
33 33 See https://aspe.hhs.gov/history-poverty-thresholds.
34 34 DUTTA-GUPTA, I. 2020. Measuring Poverty: Why It Matters, & What Should & Should Not Be Done About It. Economic Security and Opportunity Initiative. Center on Poverty and Inequality: Georgetown Law.
35 35 The calculations for childcare are drawn from Parents and the High Cost of Child Care, a publication of Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA). Calculations for transportation are based on data provided by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and derived from CNT’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index. Health care is calculated based on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures. Premiums are obtained through the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2017 Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator and supplemented with data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. The EPI calculation of “other necessities” is derived from Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) data. It includes apparel, personal care, household supplies (including furnishings and equipment, household operations, housekeeping supplies, and telephone services), reading materials, and school supplies. For tax estimates, EPI uses the National Bureau of Economic Research’s TAXSIM, a microsimulation model of the US federal and state income tax systems, which uses twenty-two variables. For more information, go to the EPI website at https://www.epi.org/publication/family-budget-calculator-documentation.
36 36 See https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA.
37 37 JOUET, M. 2017. Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and Each Other, Oakland, University of California Press.
38 38 PIKETTY, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
39 39 Ibid., pp. 329–30.
40 40 Ibid., p. 265.
41 41 SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION. 2017. Wage Statistics. At https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017.
42 42 TEMIN, P. 2017. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press.
43 43 See https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-percent-reaches-highest-wages-ever-up-157-percent-since-1979. See also SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION. 2017. Wage Statistics. At https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017.
44 44 In 2018, this group of workers paid an income tax rate of 24.2% – a rate that has been relatively steady. Meanwhile, the 400 wealthiest families faced an income tax rate of 23%. If this might seem fair, given that a larger sum of money is being taxed, consider that the income tax rate for the wealthiest 400 families was 47% in 1980 and 56% in 1960. See SAEZ, E. & ZUCMAN, G. 2019. The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, New York, W. W. Norton & Company.
2 The Struggling Class
Across the US personal relationships are largely segregated by both class and race, even if our work relationships are not. As a consequence, it might be difficult to imagine what life looks like for the millions of people living on the edge. In this chapter, you will meet people whose lives and personalities could not be more different from each other: Michael Chase and Rose Taylor in Southeast Ohio; Ellison Thompson and Erika Brooks from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; and Vanessa Torres and Puppy Love (PL) from Oakland, California. The stories of the struggling class are not just stories about people. They are also stories about places. Where we live shapes our opportunities, our troubles, our aspirations, and our fears. The places we call home can give us a tremendous sense of identity and belonging and sometimes a depth of sorrow that escapes words.
Appalachia
In Northern Appalachia, my trip begins in West Virginia, and Southeast Ohio, just as autumn arrives.1 The beauty of this region is breathtaking and seemingly unending. I take US 33, a two-lane road that winds through the wooded mountains of West Virginia. Much of the time there is a steep hill on one side and a drop off to the Little Kanawha River on the other. The narrow, winding mountain road is well-traveled by cars, pickups, and enormous coal trucks, all keeping pace with the 55 mph speed limit. For forty miles I search for a berm, a pullout, or a crossroad. There are none. My palms sweat every time I see a truck in my rearview mirror. Occasionally a small piece of land crops up between the road and the hillside, or between the road and the river. Single-wide trailers, and now and then a rambler, are nestled into these isolated patches.