Housing affordability is essential to building, revitalizing, and sustaining communities. Today, there are various stories around the nation about a lack of affordable housing among different income levels.
Take this school system in California for example. The school system has proposed a measure to provide affordable housing for its teachers. This measure would incentivize and attract teachers to the school system.
According to the article,
“Chula Vista Elementary School District employs more than 2,500 teachers and staff. Teacher salaries range from about $51,000 to just over $103,000.
The average sale price of a home in Chula Vista is about $708,000. Affording a 30-year mortgage would require an annual household income of about $108,000.
The average three or four-bedroom apartment costs about $2500 a month, which would require a household income of about $86,000 a year.”
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/feb/03/bond-measure-could-build-affordable-housing-teache/
As you can see, even just renting a family-sized household in Chula Vista is strenuous on teachers who are on the lower end of that salary range. Read the full article.
Check out this story in New Hampshire.
“We don’t have housing to meet all the income levels in the state of New Hampshire, and economically, we can’t grow. We can’t bring in or expand business if we can’t attract or retain our young people or attract new young people,” said Rachel Eames, past president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.
https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/whats_working/what-s-working-rising-housing-prices-creates-more-angst-and/article_65e53702-b97d-505c-9b2f-8422604c4677.html
While Eames refers to age being a major factor, it is important to not lose sight of the first thing she said: “We don’t have housing to meet all the income levels in the state of New Hampshire, and economically, we can’t grow.” While age certainly is a factor to be considered in developing communities, the diversity of income levels – and therefore housing affordability for all income levels – in communities is perhaps the most important factor when building sustainable and holistic communities. Read the full article.
More and more today, we are seeing a lack of affordable housing for many people in the workforce. Many of the educators and contributors to our communities are being priced out of the communities they’re working and teaching in. That is why workforce housing projects are important to communities. It’s because not only do they benefit the well-being of those workers, but they ultimately benefit the overall economic growth and education of the children in those communities.
Charles Rowe
Latest posts by Charles Rowe (see all)
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