More than one in four American renters pay more than half their income.
Imagine paying 70 percent of your income toward housing. It sounds almost impossible.
But that’s what Farah Hirji, who rents an apartment in Ballard, has been doing since December. Hirji has been trying to find a job in marketing, which she considers her career. But in the meantime, she works as a nanny and just about scrapes by. She does what she can to save money, from putting off car repairs to cutting back on groceries.
“And I really don’t have any fun money,” she says.