According to the latest measurement of California's high cost of living, there aren't enough hours in the week for many households to work and earn enough to pay for the rent.

In Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) working for California's minimum wage of $6.75 would mean working about 265 hours to make enough to afford a median priced two-bedroom apartment ($1,1760) -- before taxes. There are only 168 total hours in the week, 40 in a typical work week.

To the north it's worse. In San Francisco, minimum wage workers need nearly 292 hours to earn enough for the median priced two-bedroom apartment ($1,940).

To the south, in San Benito County, it's fewer hours -- 126 -- but still more than three work weeks worth of labor to rent the median priced two bedroom apartment ($841).

You'd have to live in the California hinterlands of Alpine, Glenn or Sierra counties to make a week's minimum wage pay of $266 and get near a month's rent ($332 in all three counties), if you want to rent a studio apartment.

"Locked Out 2002: California's Affordable Housing Crisis Continues" is the California Budget Projects grim version of the Golden State's housing woes, which show no signs of letting up.

There are no quick solutions on the horizon, according to the project a public policy research organization that completed the study to show how some workers are strapped for housing.

To help keep down the cost of housing California needs more than 200,000 housing units per year through 2002. In 2001, fewer than 150,000 housing permits were issued, according to the state's Department of Housing and Community Development.

The state added four new jobs for each housing unit produced from 1994 to 2001, when a 1.5-to-1 ratio is recommended by housing policy experts.

It's that kind of jobs-housing imbalance that has allowed home prices to soar by double digits even during a recession. The median price of single family homes in Santa Clara County, for example, rose from $500,000 in September last year to $549,000 this September, an increase just short of 10 percent during the height of the recession.

There's more to come. California Association of Realtors recently forecast a statewide 10 percent increase in median home prices for 2003.

The project's report went on to say that in 2001, one-fourth of the renter households in the state's metropolitan areas — 1 million out of 4.1 million — spent more than half of their incomes on rent. A total of 2 million renter households (51 percent) spent more than the recommended 30 percent of their income on housing.

The report also says California's home ownership rate is now the fourth lowest in the nation, with only 58 percent of California households owning their own homes in 2001, compared to about 68 percent nationwide. Home ownership rates declined between 1979 and 2001 among all age groups, except seniors age 65 or older.

Published: October 25, 2002

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.