The average home price in D.C. is $471,071, and the average monthly mortgage payment on a house there is $1,909. The average monthly rent is $2,127 which, though high compared to most places in America, is several hundred dollars less than the Congressman’s subsidy request.
Back in 2009, Chaffetz was known for occasionally camping out in his office to save money.
His request could come off as tone-deaf to some, given that so many Americans are struggling to afford the skyrocketing cost of housing without government help. And, as Time Money points out, even with his current situation, the Congressman is hardly strapped: “The combined monthly expense of an average apartment in D.C. and a 30-year mortgage in Provo with a 4.5 percent interest rate, would cost more than $3,100, or about 21 percent of Chaffetz’s monthly salary. That’s lower than the housing-to-income ratio that financial planners generally recommend, which is 25 percent.”
In 2015, a record 11.8 million American households qualified as “severely rent-burdened,” meaning that they were forced to spend 50 percent or more of their income on housing.
The timing also seems less than fortuitous, given that the Republicans in Congress are trying to pass a health care reform bill that reduces Medicaid for poor and middle-class Americans. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has found that “half of the tax cuts would go to families making more than $500,000 a year,” while “the super rich, those making $5 million or more, would receive an average tax cut of nearly $250,000.”
Chaffetz is only days away from stepping down on June 30. As he tells The Hill, he is in search of “a better balance.”
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