Affordable housing is basic need
The conventional measure of housing affordability is that a household should spend no more than 30 percent of its income on a place to call home. But in Thurston County, more than 90,000 residents are paying more – some much, much more.
A 2012 report by the Housing Task Force of Thurston Thrives counts 21 percent of county residents as “housing cost burdened,” meaning they pay between 30 percent and 50 percent of their income for housing, and another 14.6 percent as “severely cost burdened,” meaning they spend more than 50 percent of their income for a roof over their heads.
Not surprisingly, 80 percent of these households have annual incomes of $35,000 or less.
Fifty-six percent of all renters in the county are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
Those who are low income enough, wait long enough, and are lucky enough, may get federal housing vouchers. In this program, renters pay 30 percent of their income, and the government pays the landlord the balance.
Last March, when the Housing Authority of Thurston County opened the list for two weeks, they received 2,411 applications. They used a lottery to choose 1,000 of those, and today, the waiting list stands at 835. It is not uncommon for people to be on this waiting list for two or more years.
Clearly, there will never be enough government subsidies to serve all the low-income families, young singles, and elders who need rental assistance. For all too many people, this means making impossible choices between paying rent and buying food, medicine, school clothes, or transportation.
They are also more likely to live in substandard or unhealthy housing, and to suffer from anxiety and depression. And those who spend 50 percent or more of their income on housing are at higher risk to become homeless.
Many cities are responding by providing either incentives for developers to include affordable units when they build, or by imposing fees or penalties when they don’t. These policies, however, are attenuated by relatively high prices for many of those units deemed “affordable,” and by the sheer scale of the problem.
The private sector has so far failed to find innovative ways to create healthy, affordable housing for low-wage families.
This might make you think that raising the minimum wage would help solve the problem, and indeed it would – but it would take a heckuva raise; the National Low Income Housing Coalition calculates that for Thurston County, a full-time worker would need to earn $19.73 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the equivalent of 2.1 full-time jobs at the current minimum wage.
We simply have to summon that famed American ingenuity to figure out how to bring the cost of decent housing down.
Ensuring that seniors, singles, and people with disabilities have access to affordable housing is a minimum of civilized society. But ensuring that young parents have a stable, healthy place to raise kids is paramount. Stressed-out, economically insecure parents live from one financial crisis to the next, and raise worried children who are less likely to thrive in school and life, and will be less able to help our community prosper.
If we could solve this problem, it would make solving every other problem we face much, much easier.
This story was originally published September 7, 2015 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Affordable housing is basic need."