Can California state workers afford Sacramento rent? It’s getting out of reach for thousands

Sacramento County rent keeps going up, and is reaching prices that are unaffordable for many of the lowest-paid California state workers, according to cost figures in a new report from a housing nonprofit.

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the county reached $1,625 a month early this year, according to a new report from the California Housing Partnership. A person needs to earn at least $31.25 an hour, or roughly $65,000 per year, to afford that without spending more than 30% of their pay on housing, according to the report.

That’s more than twice the state minimum wage, and significantly more than some of Sacramento’s most common occupations pay, such as home health aides, cashiers and stock movers, the report showed.

It’s also more than the what nearly 20,000 state workers earned in Sacramento County last year.

About 79,700 people worked full-time for the state in Sacramento County for at least part of 2021, according to an analysis by The Sacramento Bee of State Controller’s Office pay data. About a quarter earned too little to afford the average two-bedroom home, the analysis showed.

The agencies with the most full-time workers making less than $65,000 per year in Sacramento were the Franchise Tax Board, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Employment Development Department.

The Bee used monthly base pay for its analysis, which is a floor for state employees. Some low-salaried state workers make significantly more in overtime pay and varieties of other pay such as commissions. Among the roughly 20,000 state workers in Sacramento County with monthly base pay below the rent affordability threshold, about 800 earned enough in other pay to put them above $65,000 for the year.

As another caveat, most state workers’ base pay was reduced by 9.23% for half of last year, as part of pandemic-related budget reductions Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature imposed on them starting in 2020.

State workers enjoy better benefits, including public pensions and health care in retirement, than many of their private-sector peers in the same salary ranges. But they make payments toward those benefits, including monthly contributions for their retirement health care, that many private-sector workers in the same salary ranges don’t make, putting additional pressure on monthly budgets.

A number of popular state jobs fall well short of the rent affordability threshold. Nearly 11,000 rank-and-file office clerks earned a median wage of about $40,800 in 2018, according to the state Human Resources Department’s most recent salary surveys. California’s roughly 2,000 janitors and cleaners made a median wage of about $35,300 in 2018, according to the surveys.

Highway maintenance workers, about 3,500 of whom work for the state, earned a median wage of about $54,500 in 2020, according to a more recent state survey. And the median wage for the state’s roughly 2,000 licensed practical and vocational nurses was about $64,000 in 2018, according to the surveys.

State workers are also eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the federal program that clears college debt after 10 years of payments, which can be an attractive perk for Californian’s with particularly large student debt.

Rents in Sacramento

Rent in Sacramento has been steadily rising for years, but the pandemic spurred a dramatic increase. In particular, Bay Area residents with teleworking flexibility flocked to the Sacramento region seeking cheaper rents and lower home prices. The average asking rent in Sacramento County increased by about 10% between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, the California Housing Partnership estimated.

Exacerbated by a shortfall of nearly 60,000 affordable units, the housing advocacy group estimated last year that a tenant needed an income of $55,680 to afford the average asking rent in Sacramento County without spending more than 30% of their income on rent.

But the median income in Sacramento County has also been rising quickly, according to federal estimates.

The median income for one person reached $71,550 in May, according to federal estimates, and the figure was $102,200 for a household of four. That was up from $63,750 and $91,100 respectively in December. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development defines a low-income household in Sacramento County as $56,750 for one person, and $81,050 for a family of four.

Most state workers have been receiving annual raises of around 2.5% per year in recent years, although those in select job classifications have received larger bumps aimed at increasing recruitment and retention.

The state has begun to pay some workers who live in the Bay Area and around Los Angeles a little extra, with differentials of 5% and $250 per month in state pay contracts, but has not set an across-the-board policy for geographic pay.