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I met someone the other night who was excited to share they won the housing lottery and signed their lease that day, $875 for a studio in Williamsburg. How amazing, that’s life changing. I decided maybe my partner and I should look into applying soon. We have a very cheap apartment, as in we pay $2.2 for a two bedroom and we’re not rent burdened, the rent is ~30% of our net pay. But our apartment is pretty run down and hasn’t been well maintained, it would be nice to live in a brighter, cleaner place.

Most two bedrooms on housing connect are ~$3.9 for a two person income of $135-161k. We make slightly below $135 but will likely meet that threshold later this year. If we were to pay that rent, that would be nearly 50% of our income.

I don’t understand how the city reasonably believes paying 50% of income on rent is affordable. It’s far from the 40x rule, which would be $3.4, which is far from the standard 30% guideline, which would be $2.4.

Why is it impossible to achieve a middle class lifestyle?