Bryn Good
The thing that I do know is that making more affordable housing is supposed to help those with less income, but is it really? I wanted to know how the plans to make more affordable housing affected and/or helped economic others. Affordable housing is important and needed for those who don’t make as much money. So to answer this question I had, I started with looking up information on the number of affordable housing units and the average cost of each unit.
Affordable housing is a necessity because a basic need of people is to have somewhere to live. Some people are being denied this basic need because they don’t make as much money as others do. Without somewhere to live, everything becomes harder. For most jobs, you usually need a place of residence. If you don’t have one, that makes getting a job much harder.
Right away, I learned that there is definitely not enough affordable housing in the United States. In fact, for every 100 very low income families, there are only 29 affordable and available housing units (Urban Institute). That's only 29% of families with low income able to have a place to live. Along with that, some of the affordable housing isn’t exactly affordable for these people.
This led me to wondering why affordable housing wasn’t being built. With 71% of low income families not having a place to live, there’s clearly a need for it, so what’s stopping them? Well, as it turns out, building affordable housing isn’t cheap. In order to build these affordable housing units, loans and other sources of money are needed to pay for the construction. However, these loans are only given out if the place will be able to make enough money to pay them back. And since affordable housing is supposed to be affordable, the complex doesn’t make as much money. This leaves many people still looking for a safe, affordable home to live in (Urban Institute).
So as I was getting my snack and drinking my smoothie, I began to wonder more about why affordable housing isn’t affordable. So, I settled down with my snack and began searching why affordable housing doesn’t always get built. Besides the fact that it costs a lot of money to build affordable housing units and that money needs to be paid back, the people affordable housing units are being built for, don’t make a lot of money. Sometimes, they can barely pay their rent, and even that money isn’t enough to pay back the investors' money. Owners of affordable housing units have to pay to operate the building and the rent from low income families doesn’t always cover this (Urban Institute). If the owners of the building complex aren’t making enough money from the units to pay for the maintenance, they aren’t going to be able to stay open for long. This leaves low income families with few options for places to live.
So, this leads me back to my original question, how do the plans to build more affordable housing units affect and/or help economic others? Well, so far I have found out that it does both. It helps the economic others who are lucky enough to find an affordable housing unit that works for them. They now have a place to stay that they can afford. But the majority of economic others who aren't able to find a unit are stuck holding out hope that one of the new affordable housing units could be their home. And if they can’t, they are often seen in alleyways or under bridges in homeless encampments because the shelters are often too full.
I saw something that reminded me of this as I was watching a show last night. There was a scene where the police officers were moving people out of the homeless encampment. It reminded me of some of the things that Dr. Mark from the Cincinnati Homeless Coalition talked about when he visited my English 2089 class. When Dr. Mark was talking to my class, he said that over the past decade, more than half of all the affordable housing has been lost. In just Hamilton County alone, they are short 40,000 units of affordable housing. This causes families who don’t make as much money to be more likely to experience homelessness.
Which leads me back to the scene from the show where the police officers were moving people out of the homeless encampment. This kind of thing happens in real life too. There are people living under bridges or in alley ways, who aren’t doing anything wrong and they are being forced to move because other people have their opinions about how it looks. Their stuff is supposedly being sent to a homeless shelter but sometimes they can’t find their stuff when they get to the homeless shelter because it is full.
At this point, I have found out that there isn’t enough affordable housing to fulfill the demand for it. Which leads to an increase in homelessness and people not having a place to stay. This increase in homelessness can lead to an increase in crime, which causes people to look down on these people even more. So, what’s causing the gap between how many people need affordable housing and how many available units there are?
Well, one of the major factors, as I pointed out earlier, is the cost of development and the people giving the money upfront, want to make sure that they get a return on their investment. When you are building affordable housing, it’s hard to get a return on your investment because the building doesn’t make much money. This lack of affordable housing leads to people looking to rent with low incomes to struggle to find affordable housing (Aurand et al.).
So, what happens when affordable housing does become available? To find out, I searched new affordable housing units in Cincinnati, Ohio. I found out that 44 new units of affordable housing opened up in Cincinnati’s Central Business District for the first time in more than 20 years (Rowan). A building downtown, located on 9th street was renovated to open up 44 units of affordable housing, and it just opened up this year. Just to get the building move-in readed cost nearly $14.5 million (Rowan). It will take many years for that money to be recuperated.
However, with a shortage of 40,000 units, 44 units isn’t much to lower that number. The demand for affordable housing is still very high. The monthly rent ranges from $400 to $1300 a month, and it depends on the type of unit. These units began filling up right away. Although, in my opinion $1300 a month is not affordable. That’s $15,600 a year. Some of the people who applied to live in these units only make around $26,000 a year. This means that around 60% of their income is going just to housing. That’s not affordable.
So, the plans to make more affordable housing units affect economic others by getting their hopes up that they will have a safe, affordable place to live. When in fact, they most likely won’t be able to afford living in affordable housing. Even if these economic others who have the lowest income are able to apply to live in one of these affordable units, they most likely won’t be accepted. I think that the owners of the building will accept someone who makes more money than them because they want to make sure that they don’t lose money on the building.
One of the main issues with building affordable housing is that building it isn’t affordable. Many people aren’t able to have a place to live because the renting rates are so high. Even the units that are supposed to be affordable aren’t affordable for everyone. So, as I wrap this up, I have learned that affordable housing plans are good, there just aren’t units for everyone who needs a unit to rent one. There aren’t enough affordable housing units to meet the demand, so when there are plans to build more, it’s helpful, but it barely makes a dent. Many people apply to be able to move into these units, but only so many people can be accepted to move in.
Sources
Aurand, Andrew, et al. “Addressing America’s Affordable Housing Crisis | Housing Matters.” Housingmatters.urban.org, 12 Apr. 2023, housingmatters.urban.org/research-summary/addressing-americas-affordable-housing-crisis#:~:text=Renters%20with%20extremely%20low%20incomes%20face%20the%20biggest%20challenges%20to.
Urban Institute. “The Cost of Affordable Housing: Does It Pencil Out?” Urban.org, 2016, apps.urban.org/features/cost-of-affordable-housing/.
Rowan, Andrew. “‘This Is What Getting Creative Looks Like’: New Affordable Housing Units Open Downtown in over Two Decades.” WCPO 9 Cincinnati, 7 Mar. 2024, www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/finding-solutions/this-is-what-getting-creative-looks-like-new-affordable-housing-units-open-downtown-in-over-two-decades. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.