Saturday, June 03, 2000
Housing crunch snares middle-income families
By Haya El Nasser, USA Today
and Randy Tucker, The Cincinnati Enquirer
Despite economic prosperity, one out of 10 working families earning as much as $70,000 a year in some cities can't afford decent housing without spending more than half their income, according to a report Friday.
The research focuses on “working families” in 17 metropolitan areas, including Cincinnati, who earn from the full-time minimum wage of $10,700 a year to 120 percent of the median income where they live (half of families earn more than the median income, half earn less).
In the San Francisco Bay Area, 120 percent of the median income is more than $70,000.
In Hamilton County, the median income for a family of four is $57,800, according to the Home Ownership Center.
Because wages are not keeping up with skyrocketing housing prices and because there is not enough affordable housing being built, a growing number of moderate-income families face a housing crisis, the report by The Center for Housing Policy says.
The report said 19,972 families in Greater Cincinnati, or 10 percent of all working families in the area, as “families in crisis.”
“Even families who work and play by the rules don't have a decent place to live,” says Michael Stegman, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of the study.
The problem isn't as bad in Cincinnati as it is in some other metropolitan areas, but a shortage of affordable housing is clearly an issue in the area, said Dean Watkins, a Department of Neighborhood Services supervisor.
“If you talk to 10 people (in the Cincinnati area), I think you'll find some folks who are paying much more than the recommended standard of 33 percent of their income on housing,” said Mr. Watkins, who manages housing programs for the city department. “I know the challenges are there, and it's not strictly limited to low- or moderate-income families.”
The report by the nonprofit research arm of the National Housing Conference, a housing affordability advocacy group, is significant because it is the first to look at the housing problems of moderate-income working families.
Nationally, the most up-to-date numbers in 1997 show that 3 million families, or about 10 percent, have critical housing needs. That's 17 percent more than in 1995.
Mr. Stegman, a former official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says anecdotal evidence of teachers and firefighters who can't afford to live in the communities they serve shows the problem is getting worse. “The market is catering to people who can afford more,” he says. • • •
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