For a former Navy intelligence officer and McKinsey alum, Pete Buttigieg seems astoundingly awful at personal finance.
The transportation secretary now earns a pretty $221,400 taxpayer-funded salary. Yet Buttigieg and husband Chasten evidently believe the rent in Washington, D.C., is just too damn high. In a Washington Post profile on the former South Bend-based couple adjusting to life in the Beltway, Chasten lamented that he couldn’t afford a one-bedroom apartment with a den in their luxury Eastern Market building.
“They chose the high-end building because of its location and the security it offered — the couple has faced threats and even a break-in back in South Bend — but the rent for one-bedrooms starts at $4,500 per month,” the article originally read, adding a parenthetical: “It was less when the Buttigieges signed a lease last winter.”
In an updated version of the piece, the Washington Post claims they actually secured a rent “closer to $3,000 by locking in a long lease that gave them two months rent-free.”
Still, this would be a shocking admission from any millennial couple in the district, much less one with at least a six-figure salary plus government benefits. So we have to ask a question: Can the transportation secretary balance a budget?
Amid a national housing bubble, Washington has fared much better than most cities. The average rent, which has actually fallen over the past year, is $2,126 citywide. On Capitol Hill, it’s only marginally higher at $2,403.
Although Navy Yard is more expensive on average, there are plenty of one- and two-bedroom apartments in luxury buildings with high security that go for anywhere in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. That would put Buttigieg within crawling distance of the Department of Transportation, enabling him to sell that Subaru Outback. More than one-third of district households go without cars. Better yet, the time is ripe to make a profit: The price of used cars and trucks is up nearly 50% from this point last year, and Outbacks are especially popular.
The rent is, indeed, too damn high, in large part thanks to continued Democratic control of Washington. Lefty NIMBYists have succeeded in forcing single-family zoning on 43% of all district surface area not owned by the federal government. The persistence of violent crime has economically stratified neighborhoods for the haves and have-nots.
But even if Buttigieg wanted to wait out the housing bubble before buying, there’s no reason he couldn’t afford a one-bedroom with a den. It’s a little bit unnerving that a Cabinet secretary couldn’t figure that out.
