RENO, Nev. (AP) - Minimum-wage laborers in Nevada must work the
equivalent of three jobs - at least 120 hours each week - in order to afford local fair-market rents, the highest rate among eight Western states studied in a new report on affordable housing.

Colorado College's "State of the Rockies Report Card" gave failing grades to Nevada's two largest counties, with better marks in other parts of the state.

Clark county received a D+ and Washoe county a D. Carson City and Douglas County received a C+. The best grades were Humboldt and
Lyon counties, both with A-.

Others were: Churchill, B; Esmeralda, B; Eureka, B-; Lander, B+; Lincoln, D; Mineral, C-; Nye, B+; Pershing, B+; Storey, C; White Pine, C.

The highest grade obtainable was an A, with a percentile earning
of 93 percent to 100 percent. The lowest grade given was a D, with
a percentile earning of 0 percent to 27 percent.

In the entire Rocky Mountain region, 8 percent of the counties received a D+ and 7 percent received a D; 8 percent of counties earned an A and 8 percent earned an A-, according to the report by the school based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

In Reno-Sparks, 21.2 percent of homes are affordable for those earning a median income. That drops to 20 percent in Carson City, and 18.9 percent in Las Vegas, which rank among the lowest in the Rocky Mountain West. This compares to a high mark of 76.3 percent of homes being affordable in Pueblo, Colo.

The issues in the report are expected since it includes the peak of the housing bubble, said Charles Horsey, administrator of the Nevada Housing Division that is responsible for helping the public and private sector create and maintain affordable housing.

"The report only includes the start of the downturn, so I think the situation now is much different," Horsey told the Reno-Gazette Journal. "With the steep downturn in housing prices, there is a much greater stock of homes in the affordable range now than there have been prior to that."

The report also uses federal Housing and Urban Development guidelines to determine fair-market rent. Although an accepted standard, HUD-based calculations tend to accentuate people with lower incomes, which can make the problem appear worse than it actually is, said David Morton, executive director of the Reno Housing Authority. But the report raises valid points about rents in the Reno area, he said.

"Rentals are expensive in Reno. It's not a cheap place to live," Morton said. "But instead of one wage earner working three jobs, you usually have two wage earners, which is the norm for households with low to moderate income. Yes, nobody living on minimum wage could afford to pay rent, but that's been true for many years."

Nevada was one of five states in the report ranked among the bottom 10 for federal funding for affordable housing. After getting yearly boosts for rental assistance under the housing choice voucher program, for example, there have been no similar increases
in the last few years, Morton said.

"The last three to four years have been static, so that's a fair criticism," Morton said. "New restrictions have also been placed on how we can use the money, which acts like a decrease because it limits the number of people we can assist with our low-income housing program. We have lost ground in terms of the rental assistance community in the last few years."

Federal funding limits have been offset by such measures as tax credit funding for building new affordable housing properties, Morton said. But the influx of new Nevada residents, mostly young people with low to moderate income and seniors, is exerting a lot of pressure on affordable housing resources, Morton said.

"What people forget is that you can't produce affordable housing without the private sector being involved," Horsey said. "Developers for affordable housing have been in a real bind the last few years. If prices of raw land escalate sharply and they have to compete with upscale developers, guess who's going to win? A lot of the incentive to produce affordable housing has been lessened, so housing authorities, governments and developers really need to work together."

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Information from: Reno Gazette-Journal, http://www.rgj.com

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

AP-NY-04-18-08 1451EDT