{"id":21137,"date":"2025-07-19T09:25:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T09:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21137\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T09:25:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T09:25:27","slug":"new-report-shines-light-on-wage-needs-and-housing-crisis-in-maine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21137\/","title":{"rendered":"New report shines light on wage needs and housing crisis in Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new housing report reveals just how much you need to make to comfortably afford a modest two-bedroom rental in Maine.<\/p>\n

That number sits at $28.42 an hour. It amounts to around $59,000 a year.<\/p>\n

A new “Out of Reach 2025” report from the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition<\/a> shows Maine ranks 26th in the country for highest housing wage needed for that two-bedroom.<\/p>\n

According to the report, working a minimum wage job at $14.15 an hour, people must work 78 hours a week, which is nearly two full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental.<\/p>\n

A minimum-wage earner can only afford $762 per month, but the two-bedroom fair market rent is $1,478, almost double what\u2019s feasible.<\/p>\n

Of Maine\u2019s approximately 153,800 renter households, over 39,200 (26%) earn 30% or less of area median income (AMI), and 44% live at or below 50% AMI. Over 65% of extremely low-income renters face severe cost burdens, with just 47 affordable and available units per 100 households in that category, according to the report.<\/p>\n

The coalition says these numbers reinforce a dire need for funding to build affordable homes statewide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new housing report reveals just how much you need to make to comfortably afford a modest two-bedroom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-21137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}