Housing council: Oregon housing affordability gap growing
From our weekly issue dated August 26, 2009
The chasm between wages and housing affordability continues to expand locally and statewide, according to data obtained by the Josephine Housing & Community Development Council (JHCDC).
In April, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released its annual “Housing Out of Reach” report for 2009. It determined that the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Oregon is $756 per month.
The fair market rent, calculated by the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), includes tenant-paid utilities.
Because Oregon’s minimum wage is $8.40 per hour, that means that in order to afford the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, a person at that income level must work 69 hours per week every week of the year, the report states.
A household must earn $2,520 per month or $30,235 per year to afford that level of rent and utilities without spending more than 30 percent of its income on housing.
To make the situation worse, the Oregon Housing Alliance states that rent prices have increased in Oregon by one-fourth since 2000.
Rents first began creeping up earlier this decade when a red-hot housing market was fueling the national economy, said Teresa Santucci, JHCDC director.
“When the housing market was booming, rents were high. Wages were up there too,” Santucci said. “At that point, it was harder for people to find rentals, because former landlords who had rentals were selling units for owner occupancy.”
All that changed when the housing market collapsed during 2007, Santucci said. That caused the rental market to open up somewhat.
But despite that, Santucci said that the real underlying issue is that wages have not kept pace with inflation.
“We see rents not so much going up, but we see income going down,” she said. “Wages have gone down, so affordability goes down when people aren’t making enough money to be able to pay rent.”
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The NLIHC report states that Oregon has a housing wage of $14.54 per hour, and that 44 percent of renters in the state make less than that. It states that the estimated mean wage for a renter is $13.08 per hour. As such, in order to afford the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment at that wage, a renter must work 44 hours per week.
Santucci said that JHCDC helps low-income families through a HUD voucher program.
“The voucher enables them to take that to a private landlord and rent a unit on the open market,” she said. “We pay a portion of the rent, and they pay a portion of the rent based on their income. The housing authority pays a subsidy for the difference in rent.”
However, Santucci said that budget cuts to those programs have caused much more difficulties for the working poor.
“Basically, we’re spending more money and helping fewer people,” Santucci said. “That’s probably the way it is with most programs because the need is higher.”
JHCDC data shows that it received approximately 1,208 applications for assistance during the 2008-09 fiscal year. And there was a waiting list of 7,743 people.
“There’s no emergency assistance, and the waiting list is first come, first served,” Santucci said. “People are on the waiting list until funding or vouchers are available. They become available through people dropping through attrition, people dropping out of the program, or sometimes we get additional funding from HUD.”
Other housing authorities throughout the country have closed waiting lists and aren’t taking additional applications, Santucci said.
“Our applications have remained pretty steady. They peaked probably around last fall,” she said. “(But) we’re still getting a steady stream of applications.”
Santucci said that there are no immediate solutions for the growing affordable housing crunch, but that higher-paying jobs would certainly help.
“Not one thing will be the be all, end all that will solve affordable housing,” Santucci said. “There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle.”
To view the 2009 “Housing Out of Reach” report, visit www.nlihc.org. For more information on local housing assistance, contact JHCDC at 479-5529 or at jhcdc@charterinternet.com.
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