For a two-bedroom rental alone, the typical worker must earn at least $15.37 an hour — nearly three times the federal minimum wage, the National Low Income Housing Coalition said in its annual "Out of Reach" report.

That figure assumes that a family spends no more than 30 percent of its gross income on rent and utilities — anything more is generally considered unaffordable by the government.

In Hawai'i, a worker would have to earn $17.60 per hour to afford the monthly rent on a typical two-bedroom apartment, according to the report. Hawai'i was eighth on the affordability list, with rental rates here surpassed by those in Washington, D.C., California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Connecticut.

The study found the least expensive rents in West Virginia followed by North Dakota and Arkansas.

Lynn Maunakea, executive director of the Institute for Human Services, a homeless shelter in Iwilei, said the $17.60 hourly rate to afford a two-bedroom home in Hawai'i is virtually out of reach for shelter clients.

"Many of our staff members don't even earn that much," Maunakea said.

Even the $17.60 figure sounds low, Maunakea said. Based on a 40-hour work week, allowing 30 percent of gross monthly pay to be spent on housing results in a housing allowance of about $845 a month.

Maunakea said a woman recently called the IHS to offer two two-bedroom units at Makaha Plantation for $955 each per month.

"And we think that's a real deal," Maunakea said.

The figures cited in the study make it clear why minimum wage earners must work two or more jobs in Hawai'i and live in multi-person households to afford housing prices here, Maunakea said.

The coalition report quoted federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed hourly wages rising about 2.6 percent over the past year, slower than the 2.9 percent rise in rents recorded in the Consumer Price Index.

Danilo Pelletiere, the coalition's research director, said government spending on Section 8 rental vouchers, which helps 2 million mainly poor Americans pay rent, hasn't kept up with demand.

The study analyzed data from the Census Bureau and the Housing and Urban Development Department to derive the hourly wage figures.

In only four of the nation's 3,066 counties could a full-time worker making the federal minimum wage afford a typical one-bedroom apartment, the coalition said. Three were in Illinois: Clay, Crawford and Wayne counties; the other was Washington County, Fla.

California topped all states in the hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment, at $21.24, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and New York.

States with more residents in rural areas were generally the most affordable, although no state's housing wage was lower than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, which has not changed since 1997.

West Virginia was the lowest at $9.31 an hour for a two-bedroom rental, followed by North Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.

Pelletiere said the coalition's data for 2004 could not be compared with previous years because of changes in the way that HUD calculated "Fair Market Rents," which is the cost of rent and most utilities for a typical apartment. The fair rent varies widely by metropolitan area.

Overall, though, utility costs appear to be rising at a faster rate than rents, Pelletiere said. Add in stagnant wages and the housing situation for the nation's poor "has gotten worse over the last year," he said.

On the Web:

National Low Income Housing Coalition: www.nlihc.org/index.html;

HUD: www.hud.gov