Bonddad has let us all know that workers wages aren't going up.
But now a simple concept - that if you work full time that you can afford a place of your own -
is history.
This year, for the first time in the 16 years the coalition has published "Out of Reach," it determined that there is no place in the country where a full-time worker earning minimum wage can afford to rent even a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent.
Using data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor and the Social Security Administration, the report's authors determined the fair market rent - the cost of rent and utilities on a modest rental unit - in every county and metropolitan region nationwide.
A minimum wage worker in Sacramento would have to work 115 hours a week to cover rent for a two-bedroom apartment and other bills, the report said.
The report shows that this year's national housing wage - the hourly wage a full-time worker needs to earn in order to cover the rent with no more than 30 percent of his or her income - is $15.78 an hour.
That's up from $15.37 an hour in 2004 and is more than three times the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.
It's one thing to say that about a minimum wage worker in, say, San Francisco not being able to afford their own place. That won't shock anyone.
But someone working full time at a 7/11, or as a waiter in BumF*ck Arkansas, not being able to afford their own apartment is a sad statement on America today.
Chris Bender, communications director for Housing California, a leading statewide housing advocacy group, said the vast majority of housing being built in the Sacramento region is for purchase, not for rent. While classified sections fill with "for sale" ads, Bender said, some 38 percent of the region's residents need to rent.
Many of them can't find any place they can afford.
The market is penalizing hairdressers and grocery clerks and garbage collectors who don't make enough to buy, Bender said.
"There's a lot of housing out there," he said, "but it's not the right type of housing."
The high cost of land and the decline in available federal subsidies have further exacerbated the lack of affordable housing in Sacramento, said Rachel Iskow, executive director of the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association.
Iskow's organization develops and manages housing for low-income renters. As prices go up, she said, increasing numbers of people are losing their apartments. They end up doubling up with family members or sleeping in shelters or cars or on the streets.
"In poor areas, it's just getting rougher for people," she said.
Let's lay the blame exactly where it should pointed - the Federal Reserve.
The Fed, you ask? Why not minimum wage laws? Because the reason why rent prices are so high is because of the Real Estate Bubble. Real estate prices are out of control because the Federal Reserve is helping inject huge amounts of cheap loans into the system. People are making money from speculating on real estate. But apartment buildings are harder to turn over, so developers want to build single-family homes rather than affordable housing. Hence, a glut of housing developments, with many getting bought and sold without anyone ever living in them, and a lack of rental housing.
Greenspan will go down as the worst Central Banker in history.