How a Minimum-Wage Increase Is Being Felt in a Low-Wage City
Is $15 an hour too much, or not enough? Fresno, Calif., may be a laboratory for a debate over the minimum wage that is heating up on the national level.
Elsa Rodriguez Killion, a Fresno restaurant owner, worries that California’s rising minimum wage will force her to cut jobs.Credit.Sarahbeth Maney for The New York Times
Published Feb. 14, 2021Updated Feb. 25, 2021
Even before the pandemic, Elsa Rodriguez Killion realized that Casa Corona, her restaurant in Fresno, Calif., was going to have to change with the times.
She spent money on digital marketing. She invested in technology that enabled online orders, for dishes like the restaurant’s signature chile verde. And there was something else she had to keep up with: California’s rising minimum wage.
SACRAMENTO
Ringing downtown just a quick bike ride from the state Capitol building are some of Sacramento’s most upscale neighborhoods. There’s Land Park, a leafy community of well-maintained homes that surround 167 acres of urban parkland. And there’s the Fabulous 40s, with its blocks of stately homes on deep lots, including the big blue house from the film “Lady Bird” and the six-bedroom home that the Reagans lived in during the early part of Ronald’s gubernatorial tenure a half-century ago.
The neighborhoods’ exclusivity and desirability owe, in no small part, to their zoning: single-family residential.
That could soon change.
The share of millennials that expect to rent forever has nearly doubled in two years, to nearly one-fifth, according to an annual report from Apartment List.
The rental listing site’s 2021 Millennial Homeownership Report found that, in 2020, 18.2 percent of millennials who don’t currently own homes expected to always rent, up from 12.3 percent in 2019 and 10.7 percent in 2018. Millennials are the largest generation and the report pegged their age range as 24 to 39. The report combined data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and Apartment List’s annual renter survey.
Despite stereotypes of millennials not wanting to be tied down, of those who plan to never purchase a home, 74 percent said affordability was the main reason more than double the share who said they prefer the lifestyle benefits of renting such as increased flexibility and avoiding maintenance expenses, Apartment List said.
The Fayetteville Observer
After being named one of the top 7 cities in the nation to have a rent increase, Fayetteville rents slightly decreased in January, data from Apartment List shows.
At the end of January, Fayetteville’s median rent was $820 for a one-bedroom and $978 for a two-bedroom, the Apartment List report states.
That’s about a .2% decrease from the previous month’s data, but a 10.1% increase compared to last year.
Apartment List uses median rent statistics for recent movers taken from the Census Bureau American Community Survey.
“Throughout the past year, rent increases have been occurring not just in the city of Fayetteville, but across the entire state,” said Chris Salviati, a housing economist for Apartment List.