$750/$1160 is ~64%. The common definition for affordable rent is ~30% of monthly wage[1] (based on some quick google-fu).

[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/special-topics/files/...

The lower your income, the higher percentage of it will go to housing unless you are prepared to live in a dank, urine-soaked hellhole.

Or have (more) roommates. Three people together can get a 2-3 bedroom apartment that's better than the 1 bedroom apartments they can get individually.

Presumably it's based on the fact that you can "afford" to live there if you don't spend more than x % of your income on housing, where x < 100.

Allowing for food, transport, etc?

actually you make about 960 after federal withholding, oasdi and a couple other things (mandatory longterm disability at 4.50 a month)

so food, transport, clothes, cleaning supplies, laundromat, insurance etc. would have to fit into ~200 a month.

They are assuming that you spend 30% of your income on housing, leaving you money for food, transportation, taxes, etc.

I wonder if that assumption is fair. Also, do you know where it says that in the article?

This mentions the 30%, they should have mentioned it in the article, it's the standard amount they use every year I think: http://nlihc.org/oor/2014

Also, many places won't let you rent without meeting the 30% of income amount.

In some dense cities, the bulk of the transportation costs are rolled into your housing costs, because you are buying walking distance to a subway.

Yes, it really seems like a variable approach would work better. There's a big difference between spending 30% of your income on housing while living in a rural area and doing so in the middle of Manhattan. I imagine that percentage could go considerably higher in big cities.

It doesn't say that in the article...

It is an important point that would provide context to a lot of numbers.

Click "wrote about a report", then in that article click "new report", and you'll find this:

"The signature finding of Out of Reach is the annual Housing Wage - the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a decent two-bedroom rental home at HUD-estimated Fair Market Rent (FMR) while spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs."

It is not at all obvious. I really wish that news articles like this would set aside a section where they explicitly name and link to their sources rather than burying them as hyperlinks in the text.