In my prior post, I said the general rule of thumb was 30-40% of income goes to rent.  This based on my experience that Property Mgmt companies won't approve you as a renter if the cost of the Apartment exceeds that.  However, the FSoA Dept of Housing $ Urban Development says otherwise:

Tenants should generally allocate no more than 30% of their income toward rent, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One of the few places I ever got that low was the place I lived longest up here before I lost my leg  which was before covid and the housing crunch, which was low income housing with rents adjusted for income and came in at 25%.  It killed me to give up that place, it was perfect for me.

I finally got some good newz from Cook Inlet Housing, run by the Native corporation up here but offers units to white folks too if you're old and crippled along with poor, and I probably am down to about 6 more months of waiting time for a building right near the SNIF here, having been on their list for a year already.  So 18 months total if it comes through of waiting.  Rent on that one will come in at about 35%, but I think it includes utilities.

It's almost impossible to get rent below the federal guidelines for affordability if you make less than around $35K, even in low income housing, which all have long wait lists now.  Past $35K, you no longer qualify for this housing and have to rent in the open market, so to get down to 30%, your income has to jump up to around $45K.  $35-45K is no man's land, you don't qualify for low income housing and open market prices are 40% of income and up.  It's not until you make around $50K that it becomes fairly easy to find places you can afford, although they are probably going to be smaller or in trashier neighborhoods than a person with this income usually would expect.  This is typical teacher salary around here or construction workers.  They make more hourly, but winter is very slow and they take lower paid work from Nov-Apr, so it drops the annual total.

Open market housing is risky, because when you rent it originally it might have been affordable, but when your lease is up the rentier jacks up the rent to the prevailing rate, which has been rising faster than inflation.  So maybe you were paying $1300 and after 2 years your new bill comes in the mail for $1600, a 20%+ hike.  Your rent is now unaffordable, although you are not homeless...yet.  At this point you cut back on going to the movies and eat more spaghetti at home.  But then your transmission goes and you put $2K on the credit card.  Add a $100 monthly payment to try and pay that off.    Now you're negative every month and on your way to homeless, though it will take some time still before you miss a month's rent.

This is the status of  a large portion of the population at the moment, right on the edge where if one thing goes wrong, the dominoes start to fall.  Once they do realize they have to find somewhere cheaper to live, they start looking but there's nothing out there they qualify for.  They're not homeless but they can't afford the available housing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rent-homelessness-harvard-report-center-for-housing-studies/

Record number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report findsRecord number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report finds

RE