Leadership needed

How about this as a ‘housing manifesto?’

Ipersonally know many people living in the last “affordable” apartments in Fayetteville. Rent in these apartments is about $700 per month, but all have been informed by their landlords their rent will increase to over $1,000 per month beginning this September.

This means, as far as I can tell, the average renter in a lower-cost apartment will have to devote around $3,600 more per year just to rent. Not only is this a 42% hike in rental expenses in one year, that increase also represents 13.5% of the median income for a wage earner in Arkansas.

This is and will be unsustainable. Landlords are now asking renters to prove they earn three times as much as their base rent. Many people will no longer qualify at those new expectations. Current renters will have to move, but with nowhere to move. Some will move in with friends and neighbors. Others will move to hotels. Many will become homeless.

In the meantime, approximately one out four home sales is to a person or entity not intending to live in the house they buy. This kind of “homes as a commodity” marketplace has driven home values sky high. The average home has increased in value by $200,000 in the past 10 years. On paper, this may make current homeowners feel comfortable. But for those new to home ownership, it means they must secure mortgages almost double what homeowners were securing just a decade ago, and with interest rates higher and continuing to rise.

First-time homeowners have now been priced out of the market and instead are forced into rentals.

The national average rental price is closer to $2,000 per month, which means those priced out of home ownership are now squeezed into rental agreements that likely keep them from saving for a home.

Meanwhile, wages at the largest employers in the area have mostly stayed flat. Large corporations like Tyson do not even pay their line-workers enough to meet the minimum income requirements of landlords (who want to see income triple that of rent before they’ll offer a rental agreement). It’s unclear to me how places like Tyson think they will continue to keep their factories running when they don’t pay enough for workers to even rent an apartment near their place of employment.

As a result, many who had been working in these industries are moving out of the region and to the remaining places where rent is lower — places like Pocahontas, Arkansas.

Our municipalities and counties have done very little to mitigate the pinch points of housing affordability. They continue to leave it to nonprofits to solve some of the larger crisis of homelessness. They take the neo-con approach to governance, proceeding as if the excellent coordination of nonprofits and churches and general goodwill can be effective in combating a systematically predatory industry.

And those of us who lead nonprofits and churches can do some things. Some of us are trying, converting our churches into shelter and applying over and over and over again for grants from the billion/trillion-dollar nonprofit industrial complex.

But what we need is a coordinated effort by county and municipal leaders enacting the very best, robust policies that address the actual pinch points of the housing crisis.

We need controls on landlords in the interest of renters.

We need infrastructure investment in affordable housing.

We need urban planning focused on collective sustainability.

We need federal policies that offer as much subsidy support for renters as is currently already offered to those with mortgages (in the form of tax breaks).

We need the big employers to pay an actual living wage.

We need state and federal policies that require them to pay a living wage.

We need cities and counties to release as much relief funds as possible directly for shelter projects and affordable housing projects.

We need a high-level plan with the mayors and the county judges all making public their plans to make this a top priority. We need them all on the record, with other elected leaders, saying unequivocally, “In this great city, in this great county, in this great state, we will make sure everyone has a home.”

Where we are at is not a surprise. The real estate lobby and chambers of commerce have been moving things this direction for years. But like anything that degrades first before it breaks, the housing crisis is just about ready to truly break. The question is: Will our leaders lead, or simply function as neocon tools.