File photo of residential and businesses units on the streets in Annapolis on March 24, 2025. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters)
Rental options continue to be widely unaffordable for most low-income workers in Maryland, where a renter needs to make more than twice the minimum wage to afford a one-bedroom apartment, according to a new report.
The 2025 edition of the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s “Out of Reach” report says that a worker earning Maryland’s minimum wage of $15 an hour would need to work 89 hours a week in order to afford a one-bedroom rental home in the state and still have money for other living expenses.
This is the second year that the coalition ranked Maryland as the eighth-most difficult state for low-income renters to afford.
Claudia Wilson Randall, executive director of the Community Development Network of Maryland, said she’s “disappointed” in the lack of movement.
“We have not made much progress in the state of Maryland and housing,” she said.
The report, released Monday, shows that Marylanders working 40 hours a week would have needed to earn $39.15 an hour to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in fiscal 2025. That salary, which the report calls a “housing wage,” covers the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment at $2,036 without having to sacrifice more than 30% of income on housing,
That means a Maryland household must earn at least $6,786 a month, or $81,434 annually, to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s up from the fiscal 2024 housing wage of $36.70 an hour, or $76,345 a year, to afford that two-bedroom.
The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Maryland has also increased in the last year, from $1,909 a month in fiscal 2024 to $2,036 a month in fiscal 2025, according to the report.
Renters make up 33% of all households in Maryland, with about 760,800 renters across the state. The report shows that the average Maryland renter has a wage of $22.31, well below the “housing wage” to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to the report.
Maryland falls behind neighboring Washington, D.C., which ranks fifth for unaffordability with a $44.50 housing wage for two-bedroom apartments. California leads the country with a $49.61 two-bedroom housing wage.
Wilson said that there are several reasons why Marylanders are struggling to afford rental units in the state – it’s not just rent going up and wages stagnating, though those are factors.
“Landlord costs are going up. Cost of insurance is going up … it’s utilities,” she said. “Inflation is also real. That’s just a hard place for renters to be.”
Wilson noted that high rent falls particularly hard on health care workers and other low-paid professions. Nursing assistants, home health and personal care aids, construction workers, cashiers and truck drivers, all have average wages that fall below the “housing wage” of $33.24 to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Maryland.
Kevin Lindamood, president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless, agrees that the high cost of rent impacts many in the health care sector.
“The high cost of housing continues to be one of the biggest issues facing Maryland families, including the very health care workers we all rely on when we’re sick – like the workforce employed by community health centers like ours,” he said in a written statement.
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Wilson said that while the issue of renter affordability is complex, the state can start by prioritizing the development of new homes across the state to help fill a 96,000-unit housing shortage.
“Maryland needs to make progress in the production of housing,” she said. “We also need to create more opportunities for affordable homeownership,” she said. “Again, it’s not a simple problem with one simple answer, but we have to make progress.”
State leaders are already aware of the state’s significant housing shortage, particularly for those earning lower wages.
In 2023, Gov. Wes Moore pushed a housing package to increase the supply of affordable housing options in the state. He attempted to build off of that momentum in the 2025 session by pushing a bill to tie new housing development to areas with high job growth, but those efforts were unsuccessful.
