It's probably at least once a week that I see posts in our area's community Facebook page where folks with a tone of desperation are reaching out- frantically searching for housing. Sometimes they are folks I know, and sometimes they are total strangers. Sometimes they are long-time locals, and sometimes they are newcomers. Sometimes they are single, and sometimes they are families. Their needs are the same- some sort of semi-permanent or permanent home that they can be secured of in a price point lower than the $2000 + a month range. That seems to be the new price point of our area's meager offering of rentals.
It's heartbreaking. It's also easy to get jaded about this housing crisis as it is a long-term fixture in our area. Too, any time we encounter a problem that keeps coming up again and again that we have little to no personal agency to solve, let alone make any headway on, we tend to have an innate reaction of apathy to some degree just as a protective mechanism for our own sanity. It's normal and natural to want to throw up our hands or wash them of the whole business. We want to walk away from the mess either mentally or physically.
One of the reasons I keep posting on this topic is that I don't like that apathy, normal though it is. It's important to realize that with each name, there is a story of a person whose life is now thrown into chaos because they are lacking one of life's fundamental needs- a roof over their heads.
In various discussions and commentary surrounding housing, I've noticed some common themes in folks' commentary. Here are some of what I hear and see that I could do without:
1. Blame the victims
This can come in a variety of statements. Locals get blamed for voting for tax increases, for instance. "Well, you did this to yourselves by voting to raise the community's property taxes!" We get blamed for having pets (it is harder to rent with cats or dogs). We even get blamed for "choosing" to live here, "It's an expensive place to live, if you don't like that, you should move someplace else".
Of course, none of this mentality is new, especially when you consider those who are homeless. How many times have we heard the jib "Get a job, you bum!"? This kind of erroneous thinking was deconstructed in the song "Underwear goes inside the pants", by Lazyboy, making the point that homelessness many time is driven by mental health issues which are not a choice.
Blaming the victim mentality goes far further back, of course. We only have to look to the Book of Job in the Bible. Folks he knew were sure Job's trials were due to his sin, but they weren't. This tendency is ancient and I believe it serves to separate the thinker from the sufferer, preventing the necessity of reaching out and helping. After all, if people dug their own grave, that absolves us from the responsibility of helping to get them out of it.
2. Recognize that some solutions don't work for everyone
Another thing I've heard are statements suggesting that people just don't know how to leverage this system to get a place. They might suggest a family should just pick up and move to another area, not considering the close personal ties that they may have or the large financial cost of moving. In the case of Resort Town Colorado, they suggest moving to another cheaper town in the area (for us, that town doesn't really exist within commuting distance.)
They suggest to renters who are struggling to stay afloat that home-ownership is the answer. Home ownership after all will give them stability; avoiding constantly rising rent and increasingly fickle landlords who may kick them to the curb at any time. And, in a way, they are absolutely right. However, what are the barriers to home ownership?
They wonder why people haven't been able to save money to afford a purchase and suggest they start setting money aside by budgeting, scrimping and saving. "Give up Starbucks, you'll be able to afford your own place in no time!" In our area, houses below three quarters of a million dollars are becoming few and far between, and those below $500,000 are nearly extinct. Say you were able to find one of those "bargains" at a half million. If you were able to set aside $100 a month towards your future purchase by economizing, that would be roughly $1,200 a year. Not too shabby, right?! If you kept up that same rate, you could save up a 10% down payment in about 41 years. Hope you'll be able to pay the mortgage of $2,250 a month by then- sorry, that doesn't include property taxes or insurance.
Speaking of downpayments, people also mention down payment assistance (a great program that does help!) as a magic bullet to get people into home ownership. Or, they will mention Habitat for Humanity, which certainly does a lot of good! Unfortunately, some of our working class people fall outside the parameters of this program. These are all great ideas, but pointing them out to folks who don't fit the criteria is like pointing out amusement park rides through a fence to a child who only has 2 nickels in his pocket.
Even if a person was able to obtain downpayment assistance, that person would also have to compete in a housing market that has other folks waving around cash offers above asking price. That's to say, they'd have to compete! They'd also have to afford monthly mortgage, property tax and insurance on the high-priced place. Places that might actually be within reach are manufactured homes, which many banks will not lend for. Places that have manufactured homes also don't always include the land, which leaves the buyer paying lot rent ad infinitum. Doesn't exactly sound like a starter home environment, does it?
3. Support inaction
Our local government and our local people can sometimes create barriers to solutions as well. Trailers, RVs and manufactured homes cannot just be placed on a parcel of land, for a land owner to live in (the unsightly-ness!). NIMBYism drives opposition to new affordable housing and trailer parks. (NIMBY =Not In My Backyard). Folks who choose to camp permanently as a solution are forced to move sites frequently as a deterrent to this lifestyle. Irony of ironies, you can park your RV right in your driveway or on your land as long as no one is living there. RVs as displays of wealth are allowed, but displays of habitation are not!
Any time a proposition comes forward, people fight about it. They may feel it won't go far enough. They may feel it goes too far. It may not be affordable enough. It will cost too much. It's natural to want the best plan, but we keep finding ourselves with no new affordable or attainable housing being built. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Lastly, they may have decided that since the housing crisis is someone else's problem, they don't need to step in or make their voice heard. This damages our community, because we are all interconnected. When we lose those citizens who are forced to leave to prevent their own homelessness, we lose community. Our child's best friend moves away. We cause destabilization. We contribute to the loss of employees and increase the cost of doing business because employee turnover is expensive. For those who manage to stay, but to the detriment of their pocketbook, we create workaholism, absentee parenting, and stress. We create a culture of people living paycheck to paycheck because they can't save to get ahead when all their money is going to rent increases.
We need to change how we're thinking about housing. We need to recognize it's a value to be invested in, that those who need it most don't have the means to solve the problems. The problems existed before them and will continue to exist as long as we don't build the options we need for people in every class.
Now, here are some potential ideas that may be practical solutions in some cases:
1. Intergenerational Housing
Having roommates can be challenging, but what if we have roommates who are our own children, nieces or nephews? Intergenerational Housing has been the norm throughout the world for much of human history. Yet, we speak of a 30 year old who's living in their parents' basement as some sort of failure and a pox on our society. Many of the larger homes in our area are out of reach for a single family, but could be within reach if parents and adult children pooled their resources. Likewise, siblings could share housing. Instead of looking down on this type of arrangement, we can normalize it as a potential solution. Use of written agreements and a set of expectations from all parties decided beforehand can help minimize the potential for familial conflict.
2. ADUs and Resident Owned Communities
Accessory Dwelling Units are apartments or dwellings attached to another, usually larger dwelling. They allow an already established home to create a living space for someone else in our community. They can go a long way towards serving the needs of folks in a variety of situations. New homes could be encouraged to include an apartment in the basement or garage as a way to help someone whose stretching to pay that higher mortgage, thus helping the homeowner and a renter at the same time.
Resident Owned Communities are typically trailer parks or tiny home parks that are not owned by a landlord, but the residents themselves. This allows the lot rent to be used to support the community's upkeep and maintenance and to keep costs low. As far as options that are possible at the lowest price tag, this one is definitely a great option. Land would need to be purchased, and utilities run to each space. That could be the extent of the investment, which is a fraction of the cost of traditional apartments or houses. It would be fast, too. Residents could then buy their way into the community bringing their own place or some mobile homes could be placed ahead of time. Some lots could be rented or rented to own for those who aren't yet ready or capable of buying into the community. This would increase stability in our community and there is available land near some of our existing trailer parks.
3. Reframing our market-based housing assumptions.
Folks sometimes assume home owners are the only ones affected with widespread property tax increases. This couldn't be further from the truth. Renters hurt because homeowners are always going to pass their costs on. Rises in property taxes for businesses has made the rental market even more unstable.
What if, instead of using real estate sales as the basis of our conception of home value, which drives an insanity spiral of tax increases for both renters and owners alike, we reformed the tax code surrounding property taxes? We could divorce our property tax valuation from the market entirely and just create a formula where everyone paid based on square footage, everyone paid a flat rate, we paid by the number of occupants, or so on. We don't have to use the real estate market as a basis for our tax code, we are just used to doing things this way.
Speaking of real estate, instead of taxing the property owners (and therefore the renters) so heavy handedly, why don't we shift some of the tax burden onto the real estate transactions? Last week's real estate sales in our county were lower than most recent weeks at 10 million. Even a transaction tax of a fraction of a percent could generate a lot of local tax revenue in no time! Now imagine if we had the insight to invest some of that capital to make this place a home for people of all classes. Let's start building it!
