What are your thoughts? How do your household expenses stack up? Let us and others know how you feel in the comments by following Muscogee Muckraker on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — We’re not sure what planet city councilwoman Toyia Tucker is living on, but Tucker claims that families making just $30k per adult can somehow afford $1,400 monthly rent. The comment serves as a prime example of how insanely disconnected the councilwoman is from the realities of how her constituents’ household budgets work. 

“I really would say,” Tucker said, “that a family of two, you know, adults and kids (implying at least four people) could afford eleven-hundred dollars, or fourteen-hundred dollars, depending on, you know, a thirty-thousand per person income.”

In response, and on behalf of very hard-working Columbus families throughout the city, we at the Muckraker compiled a set of two different monthly budgets to help the councilwoman and her colleagues understand how insanely out-of-touch Tucker’s comment — and her underlying thought process — really is. Read on to see those budgets visualized below.

Tucker’s comment was provided during a ‘bus tour’ taken by city officials throughout Columbus to see how officials can best serve the individual needs of a group of local real estate developers who were hand-picked by the office of deputy city manager Pam Hodge. Hodge is next-in-command as the city’s vice-chief employee after city manager Isaiah Hugley.

We’ve compiled a set of sample monthly budgets that break down the real-world expenses: one for a single person earning $30k/year with no children; and one for a family of four earning a combined $60k/year with two children. We were also very generous in our estimations of living expenses, and looked up national averages for big-ticket costs like health insurance and childcare. 

Let’s take a look at the numbers together.

$30K/YEAR, SINGLE, NO KIDS

If a single adult with no children (children are expensive, by the way) had an annual salary of $30k per year, and didn't even spend a dime on a Netflix account, they would likely be spending around $522 more than they earn each month when faced with a $1,400 rent.

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$60K/YEAR, 2 ADULTS, 2 KIDS

Even if both adults in a family of four made a combined salary of $60k per year, they’d still come up short with a $1,400 monthly rent. After all of the family’s bare-bone monthly expenses are paid, they’d be charging around $1,610 in debt each month just to scrape by, let alone be able to buy a pizza; or shoes; or books.

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THE MULTI-THOUSAND DOLLAR LOFTS

According to the website of the upcoming apartment complex Tucker was brazenly plugging for, here’s what those ‘high-end’ grand- and a-half apartments at Midland Commons look like.

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The complex only has two individual apartments available for less than $1,400 per month: two one-bedrooms for $1,300 per month. Those smaller apartments have a floor plan of just 848 square feet, meaning they are renting at roughly $18.40 per square foot, per year.

The other two one-bedroom apartments are even more expensive at $1,525 per month with a floor plan of 1,007 square feet, bringing the cost to about $18.17 per square foot, per year.

Rents only go up from there. Unfortunately for Tucker’s constituents and the hard-working families across Columbus, Tucker’s insane expectations for their $30k-per-adult salary just can’t cut it at those prices.

Two-bedroom apartments — the minimum for a family with one child — cost even more, with a starting price of $1,750 per month and range up to $2,150 per month. With a floor plan of just 1,425 feet, the two-bedroom apartments are rented at roughly $18.10 per square foot, per year.

The three individual three-bedroom apartments available at Midland Commons cost a whopping $2,560 per month in rent. With a floor plan of 1,693 square feet at just under a thousand dollars per bedroom, the apartments rent for roughly $18.15 per square foot, per year.

Tucker’s comment also comes after rent for studio apartments doubled in the Fountain City from 2020-2022, with evictions also doubling alongside it. The increase has also sparked conversations about the erroneous economic falsehood of rent control, which Tucker also supports and actively advocates for.

Unfortunately, Tucker can’t seem to wrap her head around why $1,400 rent isn’t affordable for a family of four earning $60k per year, so we aren’t frankly too surprised that she can’t seem to grasp the basic economic concepts of supply and demand that render rent control as a farce.

Perhaps having these real-world monthly costs itemized in the tables above might help Councilwoman Tucker and her colleagues to better understand why endorsing $1,400/month apartments all over the city isn’t such a great idea.

Our votes have consequences. Perhaps we ought to vote for those competent enough to not purposefully advocate for things that put us out of our own homes.

What are your thoughts? How do your household expenses stack up? Let us and others know how you feel in the comments by following Muscogee Muckraker on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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