-
In the past five years,
housing prices in Fairfax County, Virginia have
grown 12
times as fast as household
incomes. Today, the
county’s
average family would have to
spend 54%
of its income to afford the
county
‘
s average home; in
2000, the figure was
26%. The situation
is so dire that Fairfax recently began offering
housing subsidies to
families earning
$$90,000 a year; soon, that figure may go as high
as $$110,000 a year.
THE
HOUSING CRISIS GOES SUBURBAN
Michael
Grunwald
1. Seventy
years after President Franklin D.
Roosevelt declared that the Depression
had left one-third of the American
people
Americans
are
well-clothed
and
increasingly
over
nourished.
But
the
scarcity
of
affordable housing is a deepening
national crisis, and not just for inner-city
families
on welfare. The problem has
climbed the income ladder and moved to the
suburbs,
where
service
workers
cram
their
families
into
overcrowded
apartments,
college
graduates
have
to
crash
with
their
parents,
and
firefighters,
police
officers
and
teachers can't afford to live in the
communities they serve.
2.
Home ownership is near an all-time high, but the
gap is growing between the Owns
and
the
Own-Nots
—
as
well
as
the
Owns
and
the
Own-80-Miles-From-Work.
One-
third
of
Americans
now
spend
at
least
30%
of
their
income
on
housing,
the
federal
definition
of
an
burden,
and
half
the
working
poor
spend
at
least 50% of their income on rent, a
decade
has
produced
windfalls
for
Americans
who
owned
before
it
began,
but
affordable
housing
is
now
a
serious
problem
for
more
low-
and
moderate-income
Americans than taxes, Social Security
or gas prices.
a
used
to
care
a
lot
about
affordable
housing.
Roosevelt
signed
housing
legislation
in
1934
and
1937,
providing
mortgages,
government
apartments
and
construction jobs for workers down on
their luck. In 1949, Congress .set an official
goal of
and in 1974,
President Richard M. Nixon began offering
subsidized rent vouchers to
millions of
low-income tenants in private housing. For half a
century, most housing
debates in
Washington revolved around how much to expand
federal assistance.
4.
But
for
the
past
two
decades,
the
only
new
federal
housing
initiative
has
been
HOPE VI5, a Clinton
administration program that has demolished 80,000
units of the
worst
public
housing
and
built
mixed-income
developments
in
their
place.
The
program has eliminated
most of the high-rise hellholes that gave public
housing a bad
name and has revived some
urban neighborhoods. But it has razed more
subsidized
apartments than it has
replaced.
5. Overall, the
number of households receiving federal aid has
flatlined since the early
1990s,
despite
an
expanding
population
and
a
ballooning
budget.
Congress
has
rejected
most
of
President
Bush's
proposed
cuts,
but
there
has
been
virtually
no
discussion
of
increases;
affordable-
housing
advocates
spend
most
of
their
time
fighting to preserve
the status quo.
6.
And
it's
a
tough
status
quo.
Today,
for
every
one
of
the
4.5
million
low-
income
families
that
receive
federal
housing
assistance,
there
are
three
eligible
families
without
it.
Fairfax
County
has
12,000
families
on
a
waiting
list
for
4,000
assisted
apartments.
—
nobody wants to give it
up,
Egan,
chairman
of
the
Fairfax
housing
authority.
It
sounds
odd,
but
the
victims
of
today's
housing
crisis
are
not
people
living
in
projects
but
people
who
aren't
even that lucky.
7. Some liberals dream of extending
subsidies to all eligible low-income families, but
that
$$100
billion-a-year
solution
was
unrealistic
even
before
the
budget
deficit
ballooned again. So even some housing
advocates now support time limits on most
federal
rent
aid.
The
time
limits
included
in
welfare
reform
10
years
ago
were
controversial, but studies
suggest they've helped motivate recipients to get
off the dole.
And unlike welfare,
housing aid is not a federal entitlement, so
taking it away from
one family after a
few years would provide a break for an equally
deserving family.
8.
a
no-
brainer,
says
David
Smith,
an
affordable-housing
advocate
in
Boston.
9. The root of
the problem is the striking mismatch between the
demand for and the
supply
of
affordable
housing
—
or,
more
accurately,
affordable
housing
near
jobs.
Fifteen million
families now spend at least half their income on
housing, according to
Harvard's
Joint_Center
for
Housing
Studies:
many
skimp
on
health
care,
child
care
and
food to do so. Others reduce their rents by
overcrowding, which studies link to
higher
crime
rates,
poorer
academic
performance
and
poorer
health;
Los
Angeles
alone
has
620.000
homes
with
more
than
one
person
per
room.
Other
workers
are
enduring
increasingly
long
commutes
from
less
expensive
communities,
a
phenomenon known as
10.
This
creates
all
kinds
of
lousy
outcomes
—
children
who
don't
get
to
see
their
parents,
workers
who
can't
make
ends
meet
when
gas
prices
soar,
exurban
sprawl,
roads clogged with long-distance
commuters emitting greenhouse gases.
we're creating strong communities by
forcing people into their cars four hours a
day,
says
Cathy
Hudgins.
chairwoman
of
the
housing
committee
for
the
Fairfax
County
Board of Supervisors. Affordable
housing also helps make communities competitive;
it's not clear how Fairfax can keep
creating jobs if workers can't afford to live
there.
11. The best thing
local officials can do to promote affordable
housing is to get out of
the
way
—
stop
requiring
one-acre
lots
and
two-car
garages,
and
stop
blocking
low-income and
high-density projects.