Christopher Saperstein, who works as a utility porter at a luxury New Jersey apartment co-op, needs housing for his family. He and his wife, Luz, can just barely afford the $1,400 they currently pay in rent each month. But the owner of their building is looking to sell, and rents for two-bedroom units in Bayonne are now starting at around $2,000.

Saperstein began working for his employer, Horizon House, while he was still in high school. After twenty-three years on the job, he earns $19 per hour maintaining a high-rise in Fort Lee. Saperstein told Jacobin that for him and Luz , a first-grade teacher, saving money is pretty much out of the question: “Now, with everything going up, I’m paying $35 extra a week in gas that I didn’t plan on.” By this spring, the couple was spending $175 weekly to fuel the two cars they lease so they can drive to work and take their four-year-old son, Ryan, to school.

When their building sells, Saperstein doesn’t know what they’ll do. They’ll likely end up crammed in accommodations with his father or mother-in-law, at least temporarily. He thinks the government should intervene to make affordable housing a possibility for families like his: “I mean, rent’s out of control. Rent’s just way too much.” And yet, “there’s no program, unless you’re really poor, to go into housing.” Saperstein says his family can afford to pay a rent; they just “can’t afford that high a rent. But there’s no program out there for that.”