Once again: Housing Wage 2003. It isn't improving.

[JanMichael]

http://www.nlihc.org/oor2003/

From the introduction of findings....

"The result was an explosion of interest in Out of Reach by policy makers and the media. Out of Reach findings are now routinely cited in all serious analyses of housing problems. HUD refers local governments to Out of Reach to help them conduct their required housing needs assessments. Out of Reach concepts such as the Housing Wage and the number of minimum wage jobs needed to afford housing have made their way into the popular lexicon of the housing debate. Its use is so ubiquitous on Capitol Hill that we have lost track of how many times Senators and members of Congress use Out of Reach data in speeches, committee hearings, and floor debates. The extent of Out of Reach’s reach has even provoked attempts to discredit the findings by conservative commentators.2

While Out of Reach generates widespread public discussion about the affordable housing crisis, it is, after all, just numbers – numbers that do not express the human toll of the affordable housing crisis. Numbers do not tell the stories of families who hold on to their homes by their fingertips, keeping the rent paid only by relying on food pantries and soup kitchens to eat at the end of the month and counting on informal and haphazard arrangements for child care so parents can work. Numbers do not describe what it means for a child to bounce from school to school because his or her family must keep searching for cheaper places to live, never catching up on lessons or forming lasting friendships. Numbers cannot make us feel the anxiety of an aging widow who fears that she will lose her home as her rent or property taxes go up and her pension does not. Numbers do not help us understand the frustration of wasted potential of a person with disabilities consigned to an institution for lack of an affordable place to live in her or his community.

In 1999, the national two bedroom housing wage was $11.08; in 2003, the national housing wage is $15.21, a 37% increase. There is nothing on the horizon to cause us to think that rents will not continue to rise. Indeed, the loss of modest rental housing stock continues,3 as market forces drive up the cost of housing and government fails to intervene to level the playing field.


What's amazing is that last line quoted from the preface to the study: http://www.nlihc.org/oor2003/preface.htm

Republicans sanctioned this. The US House of Representatives has members sign the Preface for gawd's sake! Just the name "Out of Reach 2003" is a condemnation...

[bobbieinok]

1. How do we get all the people who can't afford housing to register and

vote?????

They've given up??

They're hard to find???

What?

[maxanne]

2. when subsistence is your issue

it's hard to muster up any energy or interest in politics. If people are trying to get out of a shelter, or just get by - that's their focus.

It is a challenge to get them to vote. I work for a progressive non-profit where we are trying to do that - but we need all the help we can get.

Thanks for posting this article, JanMichael. I am horrified by the fact that people can get all bunched up about hypothetical fetuses and completely ignore the fact that tonight a million children are homeless.

[spooky3]

3. Good point (sadly), Maxanne.

Here in the DC area, housing costs have risen at over 4 times the rate of wage/salary changes in the past 5 years. And there is no end in sight.

[JanMichael]

4. I've given up on pet issues. I refuse to be bogged down in the details...

...of a botched trial or some other thing that simply gets lost compared to the hundreds of thousands of cold kids in substandard housing this winter.