Housing Costs Causing Labor Shortages in Some Cities
New York, New England and Southern California have the highest ratio of housing costs to wages in the nation and are facing severe labor shortages because of it, a new study shows.</br></br>While American business is spending billions to help house its workers, it also is being impelled to join the lobby for federally sponsored housing reform, which promises to be a major business concern of the 1990s, according to the study published in the Harvard Business Review.</br></br>Some of the effects of the crunch include companies abandoning big cities, managers refusing to transfer from places like Denver and Houston to Boston or San Francisco, and unions fighting for wage increases tied to the cost of housing.</br></br>"The housing shortage continues to drive up wages, drain the work force of every region it afflicts, and force businesses to pour capital into ballooning recruitment and relocation budgets," according to the study, which appears in the magazine's September-October issue.</br></br>Calculating an "affordability ratio" of housing prices to wages, the study found Boston; Anaheim, Calif.; Hartford, Conn.; New York; Providence, R.I.; and San Francisco are the least-affordable places to live.