A full-time minimum-wage job won't get you a 1-bedroom apartment in the US

This is a provocative title from VOX. Original data is from: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/05/mapping-the-hourly-wa...

EDIT: A lot of the commenters point out it's based on AVERAGE apartment rent. (As opposed to median), which makes it a lot less interesting.

Why so much focus on wage, when we could instead focus on building more housing? It seems like on some level if you increase wages, landlords will just increase rent. If you increase supply, landlords will reduce rents so their buildings don't remain empty.

Doing some quick math, if someone works 40 hours a day for 52 weeks a year at a minimum wage job, they will make: 7.25 * 40 * 52 = $15080 a year.

The VOX article says you should spend at most 30% of income on rent. Which works out to: 4524 a year or $377 a month.

At current mortgage rates (assuming 0 down), someone could break even in 30 years spending ~$77K to build a 1 bedroom apartment using $377 a month to make the loan payments.

It follows that if you could construct 1 bedroom apartments for less than $77K per unit in today's market you could solve the housing problem, and make money simply by providing 1 bedroom apartments to low income minimum wage workers.

An anecdote. When Facebook was based in the Palo Alto area it offered stipends to employees who lives near the office. Landlords learned about this and increased rents accordingly.

I'd expect landlords to do the same if wages go up and supply remains constant.

Only if you go by the standard of not paying more than 30% and an expensive 1-bedroom apartment. I lived on minimum wage and easily got a 1-bedroom apartment. You can also rent rooms on sites like craigslist for even less money.

Sure, it's not glamorous or easy, but you can still live.