Detroit was at the other end of the spectrum. Only 2 percent of the city’s households were in the top tier for income, while 63 percent earned less than $50,000. Detroit’s median household income was $36,500 last year.
Households, as defined by the Census Bureau, include all types of housing except “group quarters,” such as college dorms, shelters, nursing homes, prisons, military barracks and so on. In Seattle, about 24,500 people, or 3.3 percent of the population, lived in a group-quarters setting in 2022, census data shows.
A household can be a family, a single person, or a group of unrelated people (such as roommates or unmarried partners). And naturally, there are differences in income between these various household types.
With Seattle’s high incomes comes a very high cost of living, of course. The new census data shows the median monthly housing costs for Seattle homeowners with a mortgage was $3,250, nearly double the U.S. median of $1,775. The median amount paid for a two-bedroom apartment by Seattle renters was about $2,200 last year, 70 percent higher than the U.S. median of around $1,300.
It’s so expensive to live in Seattle, you may wonder how anyone can raise a family here.
