Staying in homeless shelters, living in motels, dwelling in substandard housing--these are just some of the ways Durham residents deal with the current affordable housing crisis.
A combination of rising housing prices and stagnant incomes for low wage workers has led to an increasing shortage of affordable housing, defined as housing that costs at most 30 percent of a renter's income.
Lanier Blum, director of the Regional Affordable Living Program in Durham County, said the county has always had affordability problems. "But in the past 10 years, in all the rapidly growing metro areas, you're seeing these dramatic increases in the housing gap," he said.
And housing is only becoming more unaffordable. Among metropolitan areas nationwide, the Triangle had the fifth largest increase in the housing wage from 1999 to 2000, at 14.6 percent. The state suffered only a 1.8 percent increase.
But to afford the fair market rent on a privately owned, safe, sanitary two-bedroom unit in Durham County, a renter would need an hourly wage of $14.52, compared with a state housing wage of $10.16, according to a 2000 study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. A resident making the minimum wage of $5.15 would need to work 113 hours per week to afford the same two-bedroom unit.
In addition to affecting renters, the affordable housing crisis extends to would-be homeowners. Durham County's home-ownership rate is 54.3 percent, according to Census 2000 data. This lags behind the national average of 66.8 percent ownership.
Reasons for the shortage
The cause of the affordable housing shortage is twofold, said Blum. Though the median income in North Carolina has risen in the past 10 years, the average inflation-adjusted income of the lowest 40 percent of households has not. At the same time, housing prices have increased dramatically, leading to the current crisis faced by poor families.
The rise in housing prices pushes manufacturers to build at the high end, where their efforts are more likely to be profitable. The nonprofit sector provides some assistance in terms of furthering the stock of affordable housing, but not nearly enough to keep up with demand. New housing stock has to trickle down to reach the market, by which point it may become substandard, Blum said.
The lack of affordable housing close to their places of work forces many low-income families to live on the outskirts of the Triangle, she added. This problem extends to Duke. "Duke employees have a hard time being able to afford homes [close to the University] because they are competing with students," said Lorisa Seibel, a community organizer with the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition. "Duke could do more to help employees, [such as] house all students." Many students live off campus although Duke guarentees them housing on campus.
Where to turn for help
In their search for affordable housing, low-income families may turn to organizations such as the DAHC, whose services include helping renters and prospective home buyers.
But because the DAHC cannot assist all Durham residents, the group encourages those it cannot help to turn to other avenues, such as applying for federally subsidized Section Eight housing or public housing. This provision offers assistance to families whose housing costs exceed 30 percent of their income.
But this may also turn out to be a dead end for low-income families. As of the end of July, the Section Eight waiting list had about 2,000 applications, more than 40 percent of which have been on the list for at least five years. Since 1996, the list has been so long that the Durham Housing Authority no longer accepts applications for the provision except from people who are elderly, disabled, handicapped, displaced or homeless, said Patricia Wearing, director of Occupancy and Section Eight.
Applicants for public housing also face a wait; about 1,000 applications were pending as of the end of July.
The affordable housing crisis is a national phenomenon, but the approach to solving it differs by region. In the Northeast, a lack of space has contributed to more progressive policies, said Amanda Abram of the North Carolina Low Income Housing Coalition. In the Southeast, there has not been as much recognition of the problem. "We do have a lot of land and it's not quite as crucial," Abram said.
However, the abundance of land also leads to the dispersal of low-income families that requires longer commutes to work. The City of Durham has been stepping in to assist low-income families in their search for affordable housing. The two major components of the city's initiative are building new affordable housing and rehabilitating old housing. Since 1996, Durham voters have approved multiple bond referendums to set aside about $47 million to fund affordable housing projects, said Dan Hill of the Durham City Council.
Durham has a zero-interest loan program for people who can qualify with banks. Additionally, some of the bond money is being used to rehabilitate apartment units and build new multi-family units, Hill said.
But the city has also had to cope with a squeeze on housing funds. The state cut its affordable housing subsidy by 65 percent last year. "We have more responsibility and less funding from both the state and federal governments," Hill said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.