In order to calculate where you stand in relation to a true living wage, you must have the fair market rent structure for the area in which you live. But — the government report issued on fair market rents is in a data format that requires Adobe®Reader® . This is a free software program. It takes a great deal of time to download on a dial-up modem. If you are on dial-up, we recommend using our tables or HUD's access pages for retrieving single market information.

If you already have Adobe®Reader®, you may download the full reports by visiting this link at HUD.

Would you like more HUD data, or historical information on Fair Market Rents? Try this link. (Why, yes, these are currently all on the same page. If any of these links bring up an error page, let us know -- the government moves things constantly.) Want to read about FMRs and how they are established? Go to the Fair Market Rent preamble.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has released the final FMR figures for 2010. ULW has broken down the HUD table into states and, in the case of large states, farther subdivided information into metro and non-metro areas. We plan to have data from all 50 states up on the Internet in an easily readable format. See the vast difference in a universal living wage in our country!

You'll find that the soft economy has slowed but not stopped the increase in the cost of housing. There is no county in New York state where the minimum wage can get you even an efficiency apartment. In California, a one bedroom apartment in San Jose has increased in price by $2.31 per hour worked. In San Diego, it's actually cheaper -- you had to earn $21.48/hr in 2008 to afford a one bedroom apartment. Today, you might be able to get in for $20.81/hr. San Francisco, alas, continues to climb -- it's $2.58/hr more to get into that $27.04/hr one bedroom apartment. Austin-Round Rock, TX has climbed only .33 to get into a one-bedroom apartment -- but you need to be earning $15.06 to afford that apartment.

Can't find your city listed? Look in the next largest geographic area (usually county.)

FMR Standard

FMRs are gross rent estimates; they include shelter rent and the cost of utilities, except telephone. HUD sets FMRs to assure that a sufficient supply of rental housing is available to program participants. To accomplish this objective, FMRs must be both high enough to permit a selection of units and neighborhoods and low enough to serve as many families as possible. The level at which FMRs are set is expressed as a percentile point within the rent distribution of standard quality rental housing units. The current definition used is the 40th percentile rent, the dollar amount below which 40 percent of standard quality rental housing units rent. The 40th percentile rent is drawn from the distribution of rents of units which are occupied by recent movers (renter households who moved into their unit within the past 15 months).

HUD files also make available the 50th percentile rents for fiscal year (FY) 2010 by FMR area, county or county subarea (New England). THESE ARE NOT FAIR MARKET RENTS. Under certain conditions, as set forth at 24 CFR §982.503(e), these 50th percentile rents can be used to set success rate payment standards. HUD has developed 50th percentile rents for this purpose. The success rate payment standards program has been in effect since FY 2001; therefore, these 50th percentile rents are only available back to FY 2001. Only if the FMRs are set at the 50th percentile are these rents the same as the FMR. There is one record per county or county subarea (New England town). The rents for all component counties of a metropolitan Fair Market Rent Area ("MSA") or HUD Metropolitan FMR Area (HMFA) are the same, so there will be duplicative rents for each county in a metropolitan area. Rents for units above 4 bedrooms are found by adding 15 percent to the 4-bedroom rent for each additional bedroom. The rent for Single Room Occupancy is 75 percent of the 0 bedroom rent.

FMRs have been increased to the 50th percentile rent in those metropolitan areas where a FMR increase is most needed to promote residential choice, help families move closer to areas of job growth, and deconcentrate poverty. You will find the 50th percentile figures for both county and area at http://www.huduser.org/datasets/50per.html. The 50th percentile documents are Microsoft .XLS spreadsheets.