INDIANAPOLIS — To afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent in Indiana, full-time Hoosier workers need to earn $22.07 per hour. This is Indiana’s “2024 Housing Wage” according to Out of Reach, a report published jointly by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and Prosperity Indiana.
The report’s “Housing Wage” is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at fair market rent without spending more than 30% of their incomes. According to this year’s report, the national 2024 Housing Wage is $32.11 per hour for a modest two-bedroom rental home and $26.74 for a modest one-bedroom rental home.
While the Housing Wage needed to afford a two-bedroom unit rose by 16% from 2023 to 2024, Indiana’s average renter wage increased by only $0.07 or 0.3% during the same period. The two-bedroom Housing Wage is higher than the average renter wage in 88 of Indiana’s 92 counties, 25 of 26 metro areas, and in the state’s combined nonmetro areas.
The Housing Wage in Indiana has worsened, taking Indiana from the 43rd-least affordable state in the nation in 2021 to the 34th- least affordable in 2024. The typical Hoosier renter working full time now makes $1,622 less each year than their average Midwest counterpart, or nearly 1.5 times the cost of a month’s rent for a two-bedroom rental at the fair market rent of $1,148.