Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 4/17/19
Home. For most of us “home” is a word that conjures images of warmth, belonging, safety and refuge. Yet, for far too many people, access to safe, affordable, high-quality housing is something that is out of reach or barely manageable.
For a long time I’ve been interested in how communities can develop and maintain affordable housing so that people won’t get priced out of the area. This is a complicated question and there are many misconceptions about what affordable housing is and who lives in it.
One of the basic definitions of housing that is affordable is this: families and individuals shouldn’t spend more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing costs, including utilities.
My friend Aleta, who has been raising her teenaged grandson since he was a baby, tells me that at one point she was spending up to 60 percent of her income on housing. The technical term for this is “severely cost burdened.” Some months she would have to choose between buying gas to get to a doctor’s appointment or paying her other bills.
Before Aleta was able buy her own home through Habitat for Humanity, she and her grandson were living in a second floor apartment that had a mold problem. The mold made them both sick. On top of that, it was a challenge for Aleta to get herself and her walker up to the second floor. Despite her best efforts, this was what she could afford.
Aleta is not alone. Data from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission shows that in 2017 many local renters struggled with a housing cost burden, spending more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing. As an example, more than half of renters in Hadley (70 percent), Amherst (65 percent), and Northampton (53 percent) face housing cost burdens. Forty-five percent of renters in Easthampton fit into this category.
Families who struggle to pay their rent may end up skimping on necessities like food, clothing, and medication. Years ago, when I worked as a first-time homebuyer counselor, I met with a client who regularly paid for her groceries with a credit card because she couldn’t make ends meet despite working 40 hours a week. She wasn’t paying that credit card off either; she was just getting deeper into debt.
It’s not uncommon for a family who can’t afford appropriate housing to double up with another family to save money. The overcrowding causes stress for all involved and the state has recently updated the definition of “homeless” to include families like this one.
So, why can’t we produce more affordable housing?
Now we come to the part of this issue that is so complicated. In the U.S., developers build “market rate” housing, meaning that it’s intended to be sold to people who earn enough money to be able to afford it. This works for people at or above an area’s median income, but not so much for those who live below it.
In 2018, Massachusetts was ranked the fourth most expensive state in which to buy a home. Granted, this is mostly because housing prices in the Boston-area are sky-high, but even in the Pioneer Valley, real estate is not cheap. The median price for a home in Hampshire County is $275,500.
Rents are also challenging. A brief look at Zillow showed that a three-bedroom apartment can range anywhere from $1,095 to $3,000 a month. Revisiting the definition of housing that’s affordable, a $3,000 per month apartment would be affordable to a household with a gross income of $120,000 — almost twice the area’s median income of $62,608.
The state provides some funding to create affordable rental housing but the (mostly nonprofit) developers who build it face several challenges. Because of demand it often takes applicants two or three attempts to access state funding.
Also, in many town centers where there is access to stores and transportation, there is often little land available to develop. When there is land, the owner likely has a long wait as the project goes through development process — securing financing, working with local officials and neighbors, site design and maybe cleanup, and then, finally, building.
Affordable housing developers also say that local communities are not always welcoming of affordable housing. There is a stigma attached to “low-income housing” and neighbors have been known to try to block developments, despite the clear need to build more housing that can accommodate people who are struggling to pay for market-rate housing.
This is a complicated issue and one that is difficult to take on in the space allotted here. If you are interested in learning more about affordable housing, I urge you to join your community’s affordable housing partnership or to learn more about the work of the Valley Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit that has been successfully building affordable housing for the past 30 years.