This post was written by Jill Norcross, Executive Director.
Last month, NVAHA’s virtual Lunch and Learn series highlighted the Faces of Affordable Housing, featuring HAND’s Housing Indicator Tool (HIT). HAND, and their research partner, Urban Institute, developed this tool as a platform to track local jurisdictions’ housing production and preservation to help stakeholders create paths for removing obstacles to opportunity and supporting housing stability.
In order to better understand how rising housing costs affect our neighbor’s ability to live in this region, one component of the interactive HIT illustrates how people of different races, occupations, and incomes are affected. HAND’s tool helps us understand who is the “face” of affordable housing and the scale at which our housing crisis impacts individuals and families throughout the region.
We know that the federal definition of affordable housing is described as a household who spends no more than 30% of their gross monthly income on housing expenses (that can be rent or a mortgage, utilities, insurance and taxes). We have a range of affordable housing needs, because we have a range of incomes.
An even simpler explanation of affordable housing is when households are able to pay their housing costs while still having enough money to cover their other essential expenses – transportation, childcare, food, education, etc.
Frequently, we are asked about the difference between affordable housing and workforce housing. There are a range of area median income percentages we can cite, but it is more important to note that in Northern Virginia, affordable housing is workforce housing. Most of the affordable housing we are creating and preserving in Northern Virginia is aimed towards housing our local workforce; just workers who earn lower incomes.
Our partners at the National Low Income Housing Coalition developed a tool as a part of their Out of Reach report. This tool allows residents in metropolitan areas (like Northern Virginia) to enter their zip code and determine the hourly wage households must earn to afford an average 2 bedroom apartment. For instance, in my Fairfax County zip code, the Housing Wage is $40.19 an hour. Given Virginia’s minimum wage of $12 an hour, it would require more than 3 minimum wage workers to afford the average 2 bedroom apartment.
Perceptions surrounding older affordable housing programs often lead to misconceptions that residents are not working. It is important to recognize that there is a genuine need to provide housing for specific groups–namely seniors, the disabled and chronically homeless–who may not be able to work. Addressing this housing need involves implementation of successful models like permanent supportive housing and federal housing vouchers, but these types of housing resources are few and far between.
Nationally, only 3.7% of the total population receives federal rental assistance or vouchers, and according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Furthermore, due to funding limitations, only 1 in 4 eligible households actually receives federal rental assistance, resulting in housing agencies maintaining lengthy waitlists for families in need of vouchers.
Recent developments in Northern Virginia underscore this need, as local governments in Loudoun, Fairfax and Arlington counties have recently reopened their Housing Choice Voucher waitlist for the first time in decades. Loudoun County residents went out to the extent of camping out in order to secure a spot on the waiting list. It is worth noting that in Virginia, the average time a household spends on a voucher waiting list is 38 months.
The face of today’s affordable housing is indeed the face of our lower wage workers. A new report out this week from Work Rise Network, shows that nationally our low wage workers comprise “more than a quarter of the total labor force. These jobs are often the most essential yet experience the least security.” Additionally gender, racial, and ethnic disparities exist in the low-wage workforce population, attributing to the wealth gaps for these populations.
In addition, our essential but insecure low-wage workers, who do not live in affordable housing are the most vulnerable for evictions. These workers have less disposable income for savings which can cover unanticipated expenses that face every household, like medical emergencies, car repairs, or increased childcare costs. Sadly, increasing rents mean that residents are getting priced out of their housing, with no other affordable housing options in our region. NVAHA has documented a rise in eviction rates. In addition to new and preserved housing, we also need rent relief, as evictions are costly outcomes for both residents and landlords.
New research released last week by Eviction Lab and summarized in a New York Times article, The Americans Most Threatened by Evictions: Children (paywall), clearly document the inequitable and negative impacts on families, and especially children, who are facing eviction.
The need for affordable housing is significant. It’s crucial to not only increase the availability of affordable housing but also gain a deeper understanding of who lives in these communities. Our hope is for people of all incomes to live and thrive in our communities. We have viable solutions, but there’s a need to secure more investments from federal, state and local resources to both develop new and preserve our existing affordable housing stock. We hope you will join NVAHA in our work to promote healthy, sustainable and equitable communities that meet the diverse housing needs of Northern Virginia residents.