End the stigma around ‘affordable housing’
Grab your bank statement. We’re going to do some math.
Start with how much you paid for your rent or mortgage. Now add the utilities — your bills for electricity, natural gas, water and sewer service.
The total is your housing cost for the month. That’s how much you pay to have a functioning place to live.
Next, total up your monthly income — your paychecks, your Social Security and pensions and any other regular income you rely on.
Now, divide your housing cost by your income.
Is it greater than 30%? If so, you aren’t living in housing that is considered affordable for you.
I suspect this experiment may shock some people.
I raise the point because there is widespread misconception about “affordable housing.” There’s a stigma attached to it, wrongfully so. And that’s hampering attempts to solve America’s housing crisis.
The Morning Call this week kicks off an investigation into affordable housing in the Lehigh Valley, in an attempt to shine a light on the problem and to propose solutions.
It’s hard to find someone who says they oppose the concept of housing that doesn’t siphon so much of a family’s income that it prevents them from living a reasonable lifestyle.
Families shouldn’t have to choose between buying food and paying rent. They shouldn’t have to cram into a tiny apartment with another family just so they can afford it. They shouldn’t have to forego essential services such as home internet that their children need to do homework. They shouldn’t have to wear old and worn clothing. And yes, they deserve to have some fun, too.
Yet when a development is proposed that contains “affordable housing,” too often the NIMBY flag gets raised.
“Not In my backyard!” neighbors of the proposed development will protest, sometimes loudly.
Too many people have inaccurate and stereotyped perceptions of affordable housing. Their impressions may have come from media coverage that has fed stereotypes.
They assume people who live in affordable housing will be unemployed. They picture the old brick barracks-style buildings or high-rises that government housing authorities constructed in cities nationwide in the 1940s and ’50s. They were nothing more than places to warehouse the poorest of the poor, congregating poverty onto small tracts.
The Lehigh Valley had its share of those communities, including Hanover Acres and Riverview Terrance in Allentown and Delaware Terrace in Easton.
They often were referred to as “the projects.” Thankfully, they no longer exist. They’ve been bulldozed and rebuilt in a more appropriate style.
Yet, affordable housing is not synonymous with subsidized or public housing.
Some housing is made affordable with government assistance. But not all of it. Some of it is intentionally designed and built to cost less to live in.
Affordable housing exists in every community. It’s not based on how it looks or where it is located. It’s based on whether it is affordable for the folks who live there, per the 30% housing cost standard set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Everyone should live in housing they can afford.
Some people just have less means. So they need housing that doesn’t cost as much. They aren’t deadbeats. They work, oftentimes more than one job. But they don’t earn enough to afford a market rate home or apartment.
In no state in the country can someone who is earning minimum wage afford a one-bedroom home at market rate, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Someone earning Pennsylvania’s insultingly low minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would have to work 94 hours a week to afford one, according to the coalition.
A recent study in Bethlehem determined that since 2019, rent and home sale prices have increased so much that the costs now are unaffordable to a large segment of the city’s population. There are few rentals priced at less than $1,000. And with fewer than 2% of rental units vacant, there is a crisis in supply, according to consultants hired by the city.
Affordable housing is not an issue that breaks down along racial lines. It’s not an issue that breaks down between cities and suburbs. It’s an American issue.
This is a challenge for people of all colors, in all communities. The problems in the suburbs just don’t get as much publicity because they may be more spread out.
One of the first steps to solving the challenge is recognizing what affordable housing is and erasing the stigma that unfairly surrounds it.