Low-wage workers are heavily concentrated in cost-burdened households. Cost-burden occurs when a household spends more than 30% of its gross monthly family income on housing expenses. Only 19% of wage earners whose effective hourly wages are at or above $15 live in cost-burdened households in Buffalo, compared to 52% of low-wage workers who live in the City.
 

 

 
Overall, a single-tier minimum wage of $15 per hour could reduce the number of cost-burdened households in Buffalo by 14.3%, from around 44,625 households to 38,260 households. Although instances of cost-burden would still be prevalent throughout Buffalo under Raise the Wage Act provisions, and households headed by persons of color would remain – unjustly so – meaningfully more likely to struggle with housing unaffordability than white-headed households, Raise the Wage would make marginal progress toward reducing housing insecurity and advancing racial equity in the City. To reinforce this latter point, the following chart compares current rates of housing cost-burden by race-ethnicity to what they are estimated to be under the Raise the Wage Act provisions. Observe that all racial-ethnic groups experience lower housing cost-burden under the hypothetical Raise the Wage scenario relative to the status quo. Notably, though, the drops in cost-burden rates are larger in magnitude for households headed by persons of color. Thus, a targeted policy of increasing the minimum wage and eliminating the two-tiered minimum system is expected to result in some, albeit marginal, advancements in more universal goals of racial equity and housing security in Buffalo. Click here to read more on this analysis.