You think it’s expensive to live in Whatcom? Here’s what it takes just to get by

A recent report illustrates how much money Whatcom County residents must earn to support themselves and their families, a sum referred to as a living wage.

In Whatcom County, that figure is $16.95 per hour for a single person with no children, according to the report that was issued in September and based on the Living Wage Calculator.

It used local data to examine the cost of food, child care, health insurance, housing, transportation, and basic needs such as clothing, and personal care items, according to the report from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The living wage draws on these cost elements and the rough effects of income and payroll taxes to determine the minimum employment earnings necessary to meet a family’s basic needs while also maintaining self-sufficiency,” according to the report.

Minimum wage is $14.49 per hour in Washington state, a figure that’s set to rise to $15.74 in 2023.

In Whatcom County, a single person with no children earning $16.95 an hour — 17% above minimum wage — will be spending about $12,000 year on housing, $4,000 on food, and $2,100 on medical expenses, according to the calculator.

For a family of four, with two children and both parents working, the hourly wage to just meet expenses is $23.54 — 62% above minimum wage — for each working adult.

That family was spending $16,165 a year on housing, $11,764 on food and $6,618 on medical expenses.

A poverty-level wage for a single person is $6.19 an hour, and $6.37 an hour for a family of four, an estimate that was based on annual income, according to the report.

The Living Wage Calculator, taken with other local economic reports, helps illustrate the economic realities of life in Bellingham and Whatcom County, where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment was cited as $1,395 as of Nov. 26, a 17% increase over the previous year, according to Zumper, an online housing finder.

Rent prices

“Fair market rent prices in Bellingham are very high compared to the national average,” according to RentData.org.

“This area is more expensive than 95% of other areas. Fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Bellingham is $1,245 per month,” RentData said.

That’s up $75 a month, or 5.96% increase year-over-year, from 2021.

Housing affordability

It takes an hourly wage of $31.33 to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment in Washington state, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2022 “Out of Reach” report.

That’s a combined 86 hours for tenants earning the minimum wage, according to the report.

Working poor

United Way of Whatcom County measures the cost of living with its ALICE report on the working poor, which surveys households that are “asset-limited income-constrained, employed,” or those who live above the federal poverty line but don’t earn enough to afford the basic necessities of life.

In 2018, only 63% of Whatcom County households were above the ALICE threshold.

A total of 21% of Whatcom County’s 87,080 households were considered working poor, and other 15% of households were below the federal poverty level.

And, in its annual Point in Time count of homeless people, Whatcom County found that 832 people were without permanent shelter.