Tony Camacho rents a one-bedroom, one-bath unit in a house in Providence's Smith Hill neighborhood for more than $200 a month.
He found a place he could afford with help from the Neighborhood Opportunities Program or NOP.
"I don't know what I'd been doing right now, because you have to find a way to survive -- you know?" Camacho said.
But for thousands of others across the state, affordable rent is still out of reach.
A new report released from the National Low Income Housing Coalition puts the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Rhode Island at $983 a month.
To keep rent at 30 percent of your income, a person would have to earn almost $19 an hour. However, the average Rhode Island renter only makes about $12 an hour.
"A minimum-wage worker would have to work the equivalent of two-and-a-half jobs, every day, 52 weeks a year, in order to barely survive and barely hang in," said Brenda Clement of the Housing Action Coalition.
Clement said the NOP helps has many people as possible but there simply isn't enough affordable housing to meet the demand due in part to the foreclosure crisis.
"Many homeowners are now displaced as well too. So they are competing in that rental market against the low-wage workers as well," she said.
There's another side effect of high rents, combined with high unemployment. Homeless shelters in Rhode Island are serving more people than ever before.
"Most of the folks that we're seeing come in are folks who had been living economically on the edge anyway because of the high cost of housing here. But the loss of the job or the closing of a property of something like that pushed them right over the edge and into the shelter system," said Jim Ryczek of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless.
Camacho was staying in a shelter, but can now afford to be out on his own. It's something he said he's grateful for.
The Housing Action Coalition received about $2.5 million in state funds in past years. However, that funding has been cut from next year's budget.
The coalition is asking state leaders to rethink their decision.
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