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This is America and this is a special episode on the affordability crisis in the United States. When costs exceed incomes, people are forced to make painful tradeoffs. Stagnating incomes and rising costs mean more and more people are having to decide whether they go further into debt or if they choose to give up food, fuel, and medicine in order to get by. Affordability is a serious challenge from one coast to the other. It doesn't matter if you're middle class or on a low or fixed income. Everyone is feeling the pinch. So, let's take a closer look at the affordability crisis in the United States.
For people right across America, everything has been getting more expensive. From food to fuel, healthcare to heating, everyone is feeling the pain. If you're a pensioner or living on a low or unpredictable income, that is when you are being forced to make some pretty tough decisions. A mother weighing up how to feed her family or how to even get to work. The elderly are deciding whether to buy all or just some of the medicine they need. That is the reality of the affordability crisis here in the United States. But it's not just food and gas prices that have been the problem. It costs more to ensure homes.
Health insurance has soared and electricity bills are up. All of these factors combining to push people who used to have financial breathing space to the brink of poverty. We've sent our teams to five different states to see how the affordability crisis is affecting people. Kristen Salumi begins our special report from Manhattan in New York. New York is home to some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And it's not just the fancy highrises on Billionaires Row. Prices are high all around the city. About 2/3 of New York households are rentals and rents hit new records this year. In Manhattan, the median now tops $5,000 a month.
We still have some bagels left. Forcing some families to make tough choices. Even families in workingclass neighborhoods who own their home. So this is the space. We have the bathroom. Cat Casey is a clinical social worker. She uses part of her home as an office during the week, but rents it out to tourists on the weekends to help make ends meet. Pick out the chippies you want. Her husband works on the technical side of the theater industry. And with three children, they have to get creative to make ends meet.
We have gotten smart and had to get smarter and tighter along the way um with eating out and groceries. Um, and so we've had to shift into buying bulk meats um, at Costco and then freezing them in smaller portions. But it is a constant consideration in our lives of, you know, where can we be a little bit more efficient. In the last year, the federal government has made it tougher to qualify for food assistance. The city of New York has a network of food pantries and mobile markets like this one designed to help people in need, no questions asked. And in the last 5 years, they've noticed a very disturbing trend. The number of families with children seeking food assistance has doubled.
City Harvest estimates their food pantries receive a million visits a month from families with children. The high cost of living is one of the main reason residents have been fleeing New York in recent years. Their top destination, New Jersey, across the Hudson River, but still within commuting distance. their second most popular destination, Florida. And that is where we find Phil Lavel. Yeah, Kristen. This is why lots of New Yorkers and people from other states migrate south to Florida. You've got the sunshine, the beaches, that illusion of an idilic lifestyle. But there is a darker financial side to life here.
There it is. Insurance. And this is a big problem for a lot of people. I'm 51 and facing pallet of care. That's Leah, and this is her home. a car parked on waste ground near Tampa. I didn't give up my whole career and everything and everyone just to come down to my hometown and die in my SUV. That's not what I'm here for. But where she lives, that is the least of her worries. Leah has severe health issues. I'm end stages of anorexia and bulimia and I'm to be under care of a cardiologist. It's going to end my life. She tells us she desperately needs help.
Just a few weeks ago, I was almost in full-blown cardiac arrest, but she has no medical insurance, so no safety net. I'm worth helping, you know. Absolutely. And I'm worth insurance. I'm worth going to see a cardiologist. I know I can get myself well, but I can't do it by myself. I need my helpers. People like Leah simply fall through the system here. This is why although nationally there is some protection for those with little money coming in here no income no dependent children those people in Florida they simply don't register and health insurance is only part of the story because remember where this state is situated geographically by the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Coast.
Hurricanes are a fact of life. This state gets more than any other. 41% of those that make landfall hit Florida on average. That is nearly seven separate billion dollar weather disasters a year. Here on the state's west coast, they had two big ones backto back in 2024. Helen caused catastrophic flooding. 13 days later, Milton's winds devastated communities and spawned tornadoes, a combined cost of more than $7 billion in insurance payouts. So, you have health insurance. Then there is hurricane or wind insurance. On top of that, there is flood insurance, which is mandatory for some people with a mortgage. Why don't also throw in auto insurance because
people have got to drive. They all start to add up. And then for some people, it comes down to a simple choice. Which of these can they afford to lose or not to lose? I woke my husband up at midnight and said, "We have to start moving things upstairs. Water's coming in." Linda's home was flooded by Hurricane Helen. Our house was damaged. We lost two vehicles. All right, here we go. Now, so she and husband Mark know how important insurance is. They own this personal training studio, which also needs coverage, but their healthcare premiums shot up in January, like
millions of Americans, after changes to the system. We were paying $238 a month, and then our plan went up to over $3,000 a month. And something had to give. We've had to give up hurricane insurance and flood insurance on everything but our home. For some people, there just isn't enough money to go around. Period. It's either home or it's health or it's neither. Perhaps Leah says it best. We can do better. So, that's part of the story here in Florida. Let's take it over to the other side of the country to the West Coast and John Hendren in California. Phil,
here in California, we have the same insurance problem, but different natural disasters. Here, it's mudslides and earthquakes and wildfires. Most of the town of Pacific Palisades back there was wiped out in last year's fires. People were lucky to get out with their lives and an insurance policy that maybe covered most of their homes. Now comes the rebuilding and reinsuring at skyrocketing prices if you can find insurance at all. Life in California comes with risks and an ever rising price tag. What draws people here? swimming pools, movie stars, public beaches that run the length of the iconic coastline in a state that from Silicon Valley to Hollywood runs the world's fourth largest economy. But prosperity here comes with a price. The
median home price statewide over $900,000. With rising inflation, even those who earn well above average strain to pay that. People like Allison and Matt. I make close to $200,000. I make about 100,000 a year. Our housing is, you know, 36.50. Um, uh, like electricity, all like the major bills that come together as a whole, probably around 600 a month. And, um, the grocery bill was never this though. This is next level. The state is home to luxury sedans and sports cars that would look at home on a racetrack. Prices are driven up by higher taxes, tighter regulations, and the Iran war, which is hurting middle and lower income drivers hardest.
I pay more for my gasoline for my car than I do my car payment. It's ludicrous. I mean, it's gotten to a point now where I feel like I'm lowerass. But the over-the-top wealth comes with an underbelly of poverty just a few miles away. These people join a quarter of the nation's homeless on the California streets. For generations, the Golden State represented the promise of a better life. And now for a growing number of middle class families, as Heidi Joe Castro found in Pennsylvania, the challenge isn't reaching the American dream. It's holding on to it. John, those same concerns are true for people living here in Johntown, Pennsylvania. 50 years ago, this was a booming steel town. Jobs paid well.
People lived in a thriving community. But the plant closed in the 90s because it couldn't keep up with cheaper steel from overseas. And now nearly a third of people living here are in poverty. And their struggles are only getting harder as prices keep climbing. Where you going? It's time for the civic family's monthly reunion of grandparents, siblings, and the newest grandbaby. We always all get together, go out to eat, we go out for ice cream, go shopping together, and spend time as a family. The family is surviving on disability payments from the government. And now it's even harder for them to
celebrate because they're all chipping in to buy baby Maya's supplies. As a family, we all have to pinch our money together and afford to like put towards uh diapers and wipes for the baby. I help my daughter with her baby. I buy her diapers, wipes, whatever she needs. And it's just like rough. It wasn't supposed to be like this in John'stown. Donald Trump had promised people here during his last presidential campaign that he would lower prices. We will defeat inflation very quickly and we will make America affordable again. That message resonated and 70% of voters in the county sided with him, helping to deliver the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania. I think the people that
live here have seen a lot of hardship and I think that they believed what he was telling them and they really wanted to believe that he was going to change things and make things better. But since then the economy has further declined, pricing already poor people out of gas and groceries. One in five people in Cambria County receive federal food aid. About 2,000 are losing that help after the president insisted Congress cut the program's funding in order to offset tax cuts. Non-government charities like this one that gives away food to school children say they've seen a surge in need. Saying we have a 63% increase from last year at this time. So, we're serving a lot more families.
I asked the civic family who they blame for the affordability problem. We're trying to uh survive and get past with all these prices with Donald Trump making all the prices go up, making us broke. There's a lot of us who's not doing really good in life and we just need the money to survive. Others here say they still support President Trump and feel he just needs more time to fix the economy. But when dayto-day survival is your main focus, politics takes a backseat to securing food and healthcare. and both become greater challenges for older Americans who live on fixed pensions. Let's learn more about that from Manuel Rapollo in Monroe, Louisiana.
Life here moves at a different pace. Long roads, small communities, and lower housing costs than many parts of the country. But for older residents, affordability isn't measured in what things cost, but whether retirement income can keep up. Everything is so expensive. At an affordable housing community outside Monroe, neighbors gather around a table, not to talk about politics, but to compare notes on something more immediate. How to make the month last. I just might have to juggle stuff. You know, make decisions on what I'm going to buy and what I'm not going to buy, even if I need it.
One thing they do have in common is a fixed budget. Monthly expenses often force difficult choices, including when to refill medical prescriptions. Last month, I didn't get my Zimpit at all. I couldn't afford it until this month, so I had to put off. You know, I'm a type 2 diabetic. They raise our cable. They raise our rent. Yeah. Everything goes up. Like millions of Americans, older residents of northeast Louisiana rely heavily on Social Security, which here averages around $1,800 a month, one of the lowest state
averages for Social Security benefits in the country. Now, I paid all this money to Social Security, and now they got me living off of $1,278 a month. Can't do that. While these monthly checks provide a vital safety net, the system was never designed to be a person's sole source of income. Yet, millions of older Americans have no other financial options. One in 10 Americans over the age of 65 lives below the poverty line. That means that on this road, statistically, one out of every 10 mailboxes belongs to someone who worked their whole life and still came up short. Just down the road in Morehouse Parish, Jackie Williams, a retired assembly line worker for General Motors, says rising prices are making it harder to stretch a dollar.
Money is just sc it's is it's it's a hard time here. It really is. Jackie lives on a fixed income of around $1,400 a month. It's just enough to get by, but she says every day is marked by difficult financial decisions. We talk about it all the time in church. We're having a difficult time here and it's not just Mo House Parish, it's everywhere. For many, food assistance has become part of the routine. The Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana says they're seeing more older Americans turning to food assistance than ever before. For some, a box like this is meant to supplement a tight budget. For others, this is the money runs out and then you wonder where you going to get your next meal
from. In northeast Louisiana, generations of factory closures, limited economic opportunities, and persistent poverty have left many older residents with little savings to fall back on. Being a senior citizen is where we check on one another, make sure we're fed, and we got so many people that don't have homes, don't have jobs, or don't know where to go, or don't have nobody to lean on. For many older Americans here, affordability is simply about making it through the month together. It's kind of hard, you know, because sometime I get depressed, sometime I feel hopeless, you know, but these people around here, they keep me in sync, you know,
the importance of being part of a community, right? Yes. Being part of a community is what helps. All right. So, you've heard their stories. How then will the affordability crisis affect voters decisions at this year's midterms? Joining us today is John Ferry, a Republican strategist and former congressional staffer and Eric Ham, a political analyst who was also a former congressional staffer. Thank you to you both. Eric, can I start with you? Is the American dream disappeared? It certainly feels that way for a lot of people. And now when you look at rising gas prices, interest rates, and of course the affordability crisis, which is becoming increasingly more unpredictable, people are now beginning
to really feel the pinch. Yeah. And so, John, what does affordability even mean to Americans today? Well, it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Um, and if you look at the prices from 24 to 26, some prices have gone down, some prices have gone up. The big problem for Republicans is gas prices have gone up dramatically. diesel prices that impacts food prices. Uh but if you look at prescription drugs, they've gone down. Uh eggs have gone down. Some household items have gone down. So it all depends. If you look at the older folks there, social security payments have actually gone up. Um which is good. But um you know, the fact is that it's it's it's hard for older Americans if you're living on a
fixed income to really be able to survive on a fixed budget. I think the problem for the pro the Republicans and for the president it's not just about affordability. It's all about credibility. The promise the president promised that this would happen. He overpromised and so far he's underdelled. He's also hasn't focused at all uh on an economic message. He spent this whole campaign trail talking either about Iran or the reflecting pool. So I think there's a lack of focus and overpromising during the campaign which has gotten Republicans in trouble. There's some Republican introspection. Can I put it to you then Eric? We've heard from a number of Democrat candidates standing in these elections
who've made promises that it's terrible for if you vote for Donald Trump's party again. You should be voting for the Democrats, we'll change things. But what are they actually offering to tackle something this big? One of the things that the minority leader Hakee Jeff in the House is saying they will actually tackle this issue of trade reform that they want to actually take some of those powers back from the president. We know Donald Trump since the implementation of those liberation day tariffs uh the trade gap between the United States and many nations has gotten wider and as a result particularly of the trade war between the United States and Canada. Now we're
seeing some families in key battleground states like Michigan where you have families that are now paying $5,000 more for goods than they were before the tariffs went into effect. So what we're seeing is this affordability crisis was bad when Biden left office. Now we see under President Donald Trump's policies, he's only exacerbated that problem as opposed to actually solving the crisis. Yeah. When we talk about affordability though, now we are not talking just about being economically impoverished. Onethird of middle class families in the US cannot make ends meet. Nearly 40% of households have struggled for at least a
decade. This is not just a Trump problem. This is not just a Biden problem for voters who have voted Democrat in the past. Can they see any real change when it comes to how they're going to fill the gas tank this weekend? Well, if you look at what we're seeing right now, at least in terms of early voting, we are seeing a very large amount of enthusiasm, particularly among Democrats. However, we do know that based on the last economic numbers that we saw come in, inflation has gone up a point. And when you look at the unemployment rates, uh, where we only saw 29,000 jobs created in the month of September, that simply doesn't bold well for people who are dealing both with affordability and the ability to
actually find employment to be able to pay for many of these exorbitant prices of things. When we talk about prices, the US Department of Agriculture publishes a budget food plan for a family of four every month. It includes things like bread, meat, milk, and cereal. all the things that fill your pantry. And in August, those items cost a total of $1,023. That is up from the same time a year ago when the same items cost $999. Now, it might not sound like a big jump, but prices have been steadily rising for the past five years, putting more and more pressure on households. When it comes to filling the tank and the family car, the average cost of gas across the country, as we've just discussed, it's high. It's at $4.37.
That is up 46% from this time a year ago. And while diesel has jumped by 65% over the same period. John, do you know how much a gallon of milk is these days? It's about two $2.30 is my guess. $3 over $3 for conventional whole milk. And it is not just groceries and it's not just gas. It's like you pointed out, some things have gone down, but when you take the sum total, we heard in that story there, mortgage rates, college education, that's $40,000 a year, insurance for all of these things. What do Americans have to choose? What is their decision that they are actually making here? Because dayto-day, they're choosing whether to pay the bill or not.
Yeah. I mean, the number one choice they have to make is whether they're going to go to vote or not. And if you see a lot of the folks who are on the lower end, they might not have time or the inclination to go vote. Um, so that's the number one thing. Then they also have to decide between the two parties which side has a better argument on affordability because you know under the Biden years inflation was through the roof. Uh they've it's come down a bit. So they have to make a choice as to whether uh the Republicans have a better affordability argument or the Democrats do. To Eric's point, the Democrats are actually making an argument on affordability. Republicans literally are not talking about the
economy at all. Or if they are, it's it's not in any ways that they should be talking about it. Um to your point on interest rates, this is the thing that I think makes it very difficult to get a new house because interest rates are so high and that actually increases anxiety for people who want to believe in the American dream and move forward. The interest rates have gone skyrocketed since um since this war. So, I think you can really kind of trace all of these issues for the Republicans and the president with his decision to invade Iran and that's going to go if the we lose this election is because of that decision.
Yeah. And he has signaled that there could be more attacks against Iran. How much worse then do you think the average American will be if the war continues? Uh I think it'll it'll just get more and more difficult to afford the if interest rates keep going up, if gas prices keep going up. Um, you know, there the president has done a lot of good things on cutting prices on other issues. I mean, I do think the free market works and to Eric's point on tariffs. I mean, that's an easy thing for the Democrats to point to, even though 5 years ago, 10 years ago, the Democrats who were the ones who wanted tariffs. And the reason why the president wanted tariffs was because he
wanted to bring uh manufacturing jobs back to the United States. That takes a while. And for the president, you know, he doesn't have a lot long time. Neither do Republicans. So, yeah, there's a short time issue that comes with the war. And I will say that if this war does conclude and we get this all sorted out, gas prices are going to come down very quickly and we might have deflation. It's a promise we hear quite a bit. Do you believe it? Can Democratic voters believe it this election? Can Republican voters believe it this?
Well, I think this is going to be a shot in the dark. People simply don't know. But I think more than anything, what people want is a check on power. Right now, Republicans control all levels of political power in Washington. But even if you get that check, that doesn't mean that there's going to be real solutions to this affordability crisis. In fact, what it could lead to is actually gridlock in Washington where you have Democrats controlling Congress, rep president controlling the White House, and anything that may get passed will simply get vetoed uh by this administration. Does that solve the problem? No. And I think it puts the voters and the people back in the same precarious position that they were
before the elections began. We only have about 90 seconds. I'd like to get to a quick fire if I can. Is the answer to easing America's affordability crisis going to be wages? If 38 million households earn just $10 an hour or more, $10, they say they'd be able to make ends meet. Is higher wages something that it doesn't get talked about. Is that the answer to America's affordability crisis? I think it's always the answer. The problem is even if you get there, do we see many of the same issues? Rising inflation, tariffs, and other things that make it so much more difficult uh for voters to be able to keep up.
Joan, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, if wages go up through the free market, yeah, that's great. But if they go by government fiat, that doesn't make any sense and it actually makes things much worse. Eric makes a really important point. This election is about checking presidential power. It always is in a midterm. And the president has not made a case of what gridlock is bad for the American people. Had he made that case, I think we'd be in a stronger position. Checking presidential power though effectively, and we've had guests say this before, it means saying no to things. It doesn't actually mean much progress is going to be made for the average American looking at their grocery and power bill this month.
Absolutely. And I think that is that's the concern here. And you're asking for pause for two more years. Well, people certainly don't want that. People want change. People want solutions. I just don't know if they're going to get that, particularly given how polarized we are in Washington right now. All right, John, do you think that this is going to be a just a very quick yes or no? Is this going to be a vote on affordability or a vote on being able to say no for the next two years?
It's going to be a vote on President Trump and his credibility. Uh John Ferry, Republican strategist and former congressional staffer joining us today and Eric Ham, political analyst who's also a former congressional staffer. Gentlemen, thank you both for discussing affordability and the midterms with us today. Well, that's all from the team here in Washington DC. We are, of course, on air Monday through Friday at 18:30 GMT or 2:30 p.m. Eastern here in the United States. For now, let's hand back to Alazer's global headquarters in Doha. Thanks for joining us.
