Thank you for your recent articles concerning affordable housing. While dining at Ken’s Truck Town recently, I saw a notice entitled “1941 Remember when …” This notice included the following economic data for the year 1941:

Three-bedroom home – $4,000

Average income – $2,437

New Ford – $680

Gas, one gallon – $0.10

Bread – $0.08

Milk, one gallon – $0.54

Bacon, 1 pound – $0.34

I thought it would be interesting to convert these prices to equivalent present-day prices. In your recent affordable-housing article, you mention that the median cost of a home in King County is now $245,000, and the median household income is $62,600. Comparing today’s median income with the average 1941 income, we can calculate that a dollar today corresponds to 3.9 cents in 1941.

Using this conversion factor, we can calculate the equivalent 1941 prices in today’s dollars.

Three-bedroom home – $102,749

New Ford – $17,467

Gas, one gallon – $2.57

Bread – $2.06

Milk, one gallon – $13.87

Bacon, 1 pound – $8.73

These results show that food today costs much less than it did in 1941. Even though we complain about the high price of gasoline, it also costs much less than it did in 1941. A new Ford costs more than it did in 1941, but the cost of a home has increased enormously since 1941.

One could say that homes today are much larger than they were then, but the problem remains: The average wage earner spent one year and eight months’ salary on an average home in 1941. Today the median worker must spend three years and 11 months’ salary for a median home. It is nearly 2 1/2 times more difficult to buy a home today than it was in 1941.

Philip Cassady

Snoqualmie