Every year much is made by non-profit affordable housing advocates of the Out of Reach report, a study produced by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). Every year the study puts out a number of what a person would have to earn to afford an apartment. The standard always used is the typical one, 30 percent of monthly income means a person’s housing is affordable. Add a discount for income using Area Median Income (AMI), take gross wages and average rents and do some quick math and just like that anyone will know just how “out of reach” housing in Seattle, for example, is for people at a certain income level.

The study uses this data point:

A renter earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work … 102 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom Fair Market Rent.

But is this way of measuring housing really accurate? Does it even make common sense? And wait, why does this single worker need a two-bedroom apartment?

Jason Rantz from KIRO Radio points out the obvious in his blog.

But did you notice a data point that I quoted above? It’s a key data point they use. In fact, it’s the default data point.

They’re talking about a single person making minimum wage and what it would take to live in a two-bedroom apartment.

They say the two-bedroom housing wage in Washington state is $21.69. No, it’s not. It’s $10.85. Why? Because two bedrooms are generally for two people (at a minimum).

So it doesn’t make sense. But all over the place, like The Stranger, the study is cited and the point repeated over and over, that we’re in a housing crisis — I guess that’s true, if you’re a single individual trying to put together enough money to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

Why misrepresent or twist data like this? There’s only one reason: Money.

NLIHC continues to work to ensure that the [National Housing Trust Fund] receives enough funding through dedicated revenue sources to address the urgent housing needs of millions of Americans

Non-profit agencies that crank out housing units that are subsidized want to build more. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the issue quickly goes from one of measuring a problem, thinking hard about solutions, and then applying money and efficiencies to implement a solution to politics pure and simple. Someone has to pay for all these affordable housing units, and that someone is increasingly developers and builders through terrible interventions like Councilmember O’Brien’s linkage tax.

But I pointed out already, that even if we thought turning the unit crank was the best way to solve our problems the current system for financing and building housing is very inefficient. But here’s the real frustration I have: the methodology used to define the problem is flawed. Even the 30 percent standard is suspect as I’ve written before.

Real people make choices based a wide array of factors, one of which, of course, is price. But that’s not the only thing. Some people want to pay 35 percent of their income for housing, and some, paying less than 30 percent just got a good deal. Reading this study doesn’t help us understand why that is a problem — or not. Like most of the needs assessments of housing affordability (especially the City of Seattle’s), the NLIHC study is arbitrary. Basing big housing policy decisions on numbers grabbed out of the air, or worse, simply made up, is going to lead us to making some very poor choices.