WASHINGTON (AP) - Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, D-Mass., want the high cost of housing to compel the Republican-led Congress to pass an increase in the minimum wage.
Citing a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the senators, Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo all called Thursday for an increase in the $5.15 minimum hourly wage.
"Our proposal to raise the minimum wage by $1 over the next two years will enable more people to participate in the economic well-being of the nation, and help more people to afford better housing," said Kennedy, who has successfully led past efforts to raise the minimum wage.
The lawmakers calculated that minimum wage workers who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earn only $10,700 annually.
Cuomo said the report "makes a very blunt, bold, accurate statement, which is that affordable housing is out of reach for many Americans."
In Massachusetts, workers would have to earn at least $15.26 per hour, nearly three times the current minimum, in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment at 30 percent of their income, according to the report.
The necessary wage would be even higher in the costly Boston metro area: $17.42, the report said. It said 48 percent of renters in Boston can't afford the fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit.
Nationally, Boston ranked as the 8th most expensive metropolitan area for housing. Among states, Massachusetts ranked 5th, behind Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia.
"Nowhere in the United States, in no state, metropolitan area, county or New England town, is the minimum wage adequate to afford the two bedroom" fair market rent, the report said.
Affordable housing is looming as a major issue in Washington. A House committee has recommended an increase in HUD's budget of $2 billion over this year's $26.1 billion budget, far less than what Cuomo and others say is necessary to provide adequate housing assistance to lower-income people.
Meanwhile, HUD has also taken steps, and Congress is considering solutions, to stem affordable housing losses as landlords in hot real estate markets, such as Boston's, drop out of a HUD program for low-income families, disabled and elderly to seek higher rents on the open market.
On the minimum wage, Senate Democrats are eager to attach an increase to legislation that Republicans have crafted to overhaul the nation's bankruptcy laws.