Credit: Photo via City of Orlando/Facebook

Each year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition comes out with a new report on how much renters need to make in the U.S. in order to comfortably afford a place to live — and in Orlando, affordability isn’t getting any better.

Although rents aren’t spiking as quickly as they were a few years ago, renters in the Orlando metro still need to make at least $33 an hour to afford the average one-bedroom apartment, or roughly $69,000 per year, according to the housing nonprofit’s new report titled “Out of Reach.”

That income requirement is up a couple of dollars per hour from last year, when Orlando renters needed to make at least $31.50 an hour to comfortably afford a one-bedroom apartment, or $35.71 an hour to afford a two-bedroom rental.

The new report finds that a minimum-wage worker in Florida — earning the state’s minimum wage of $13 an hour — would need to work 96 hours a week to afford a “modest” one-bedroom rental at fair market rate. That’s more hours than you would put in working two full-time jobs. 

Florida broadly ranks ninth nationwide in having the highest housing wage, according to the report, behind states like California, Washington, New York and Maryland. This term, “housing wage,” is defined as the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home at fair market rate without spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, including rent or mortgage payments.

This follows standard guidelines from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on what’s considered “affordable” for renters and homeowners. Under those guidelines, affordable means spending no more than 30 percent of your income on rent or housing costs. Any share above that, experts say, can leave you “cost-burdened” amid other essential living expenses.

A report published by the U.S. Census Bureau last September found that nearly half of all renter households — more than 21 million — nationwide qualified as cost-burdened.

Renter households make up 37 percent of all households in the Orlando metropolitan area, spanning from Kissimmee up to Sanford, according to the NLIHC. Orlando has consistently ranked as one of the most cost-burdened metros in the U.S., with 61 percent of renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing as of last year.

While Central Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of people who work in Florida’s multibillion-dollar tourism industry — from jobs at hotels to bars, restaurants and theme parks — average wages for these jobs have failed to catch up with Orlando’s rents.

Median wages for food service workers, cashiers, housekeepers and wait staff are about half what a worker would need to earn in order to comfortably afford a one-bedroom rental in the Orlando metro, the report estimates.

Although average rents vary by ZIP code, the fair market rate for a rental in the Orlando metro area is $1,727 a month for a one-bedroom, or nearly $2,000 for a two-bedroom rental. Affording that comfortably requires earning at least $33.21 per hour, working full-time, or $37.65 per hour, respectively.

But it’s not just wages that are the problem. According to the NLIHC, employers offering higher wages alone won’t be enough to solve the local or national housing crisis.

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What will help?

Beyond higher rental costs, Florida (and the nation, broadly) continues to suffer from an ongoing shortage of affordable homes. Development in Orlando, including for low-income families priced out of the standard market, is in the works, but building quality, safe housing takes time.

Federal funding cuts potentially coming down the pipeline under Congress and the Trump administration (not to mention tariffs or labor shortages resulting from mass deportations of immigrant workers in construction) could also negatively affect progress on this front.

“We need major investments in rental assistance, in the preservation and development of affordable and accessible housing, and in stronger tenant protections,” said NLIHC CEO and president Renee Willis, during a press call Thursday. “We need bold leadership that centers those with the greatest needs.”

Dan Emmanuel, director of research for the NLIHC, said a federal appropriations bill recently approved by the U.S. House would cut staffing within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — the federal agency that helps support affordable housing solutions — by 26 percent.

“If you’ve ever been inside HUD, you know that place already operates on a skeleton crew,” he told media on a press call. “I can’t understand how HUD would continue to operate with 26 percent less staff.”

According to the Associated Press, more than 1 million low-income households in the U.S. could stand to lose federal rental assistance they have access to currently, under a two-year limit the Trump administration has proposed on housing vouchers.

Research has found that most people who are even eligible for this assistance, based on their income level, aren’t even accessing it. “Just one in four households who qualify for rental assistance actually receive it, due to inadequate funding,” Willis shared.

Nonprofits in Central Florida that assist homeless people and operate programs for families at risk for homelessness have already seen threats to federal grant funds under the Trump administration that have caused waves of confusion and chaos.

The Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, a nonprofit that uses government grant funds to help house and track the number of homeless people in the region, say they helped more than 5,000 homeless people return to “stable, safe, long-term housing” last year alone.

Still, nearly 3,000 people in the region were found to be experiencing homelessness during a one-day count this past January, and advocates say even that figure is likely an undercount due to more people hiding to avoid detection or arrest. Over 40 percent of those found without shelter in Central Florida this year were children and older adults over the age of 55, according to HSN.

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This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2025.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.