This morning I had the privilege to be part of a radio interview on KFAI talking about the incredible disconnect between affordable housing need in this community and our ability to meet it. The basic question for many people is if we have a growing number of foreclosed and vacant properties in our community and an unyielding number of homeless families and individuals, why can’t we simply match the need with the supply? What’s happening with affordable housing in the Twin Cities, and how did we get to this point?
There has been some recent coverage about the growing housing needs and production challenges in our community. MinnPost ran a story last week about the latest report from the Metropolitan Council documenting the region’s inability to keep pace with historic levels of affordable housing production, let alone be able to close the gap for affordable units. The region is also experiencing a rising level of households paying more than 30% of their income for housing (the threshold definition for affordability) and more families are becoming homeless as rental markets tighten, unemployment remains high, and the economic recession persists. Waiting lists for subsidized affordable housing are 2-3 years long and the number is in the thousands.
This may be a situation where there are fairly simple answers (“yes, let’s build more” or “have homeless families move into vacant properties”), but reality is the solutions may be more complicated. In the affordable housing arena, much like many other areas of the social and public sectors (e.g. education, workforce development, health, etc), we have a series of hurdles that stem from constrained and segregated funding streams; and with federal budget cuts, it’s only getting worse. In addition, the affordable housing industry also faces persistent challenges in determining locations for affordable housing, the costs associated with building quality affordable housing, and misperceptions about who needs affordable housing and the development process generally.
We not only have the perfect storm brewing, I believe we’re in it. I also believe, however, we have a great deal of capacity to address the affordable housing challenges of this region and in our communities, if we can clear the hurdles. A good start will be to generate attention toward meeting the affordable housing challenge during this holiday season and translating that into policy action next year.
For more information about affordable housing challenges and actions to take check out the following links: Minnesota Housing, Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, Minnesota Housing Partnership, and the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers.
Andriana, you do such a great job pointing out the complexities and sources of hope, and the macroeconomic drivers of this problem. We have such good people and organizations working in all sectors on this challenge, despite persistent and gruelling resource constraints. Our community vitality depends on people having secure and affordable housing. We must invest in the inventory and availability of affordable housing units on an ongoing basis.