Housing! Everyone needs it. But what if they can’t afford it?
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, housing is considered “affordable” if if costs no more than 30% of someone’s gross income, including utilities.
So how are we doing at keeping homes affordable? Not great. Roughly 1 in 4 American families spend more than 50% of their monthly income on their homes, according to a 2017 report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
Why does this affect you? Communities need a vibrant mix of housing—high-end homes, mid-market homes, affordable homes—so all sorts of families can flourish. When housing costs start pushing people out, our communities are less stable overall. We see worse mental health, more sickness and disease, more job turnover, and on and on. Strong housing helps all of us.
So we need more and more housing options. And we need them all around our city. We need options for teachers, firefighters, construction workers, grocery store clerks, journalists, people with disabilities, grandparents, mothers, fathers, children, and more.
What is being done to increase the availability of housing?
Texas lawmakers are introducing new bills to speed up the construction of new houses and apartments. These bills will allow builders to use less land to build homes, get local permits faster and make it more difficult for neighborhood groups to block new housing projects.
In San Antonio, many organizations are working to create more homes everyone can afford. One example: ProsperWest has been working to buy homes on the West Side and renovate them to be affordable for their neighbors. They are also raising money for a fund for buying buildings in the West Side, and filling them with small businesses.
How can you support your neighbors and affordable housing?
