Affordable Housing

I often speak at public meetings about the state of affordable housing in our region. In both our rural and larger towns, we’re seeing many of the same challenges as large urban areas:

1. The cost of housing requires a large percentage of many people’s household incomes. Many people in our region can only get part-time, low paid, and/or seasonal work that leaves very little room for living expenses after housing costs.
2. There is not enough low cost housing units in our region, so even when we have public agencies helping people with housing, they often cannot find affordable apartments or houses in any nearby community.
3. Transportation is a huge challenge for rural areas and prevents people from being able live too far from work if they do not have their own car.

What is the federal role in affordable housing, and how can we make improvements?
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The federal government has a housing subsidy program, called Section 8, that provides housing vouchers that can be associated with a renter or with a particular housing unit. In our region of California, like many other places, the program is not working very well.  There are also federal financial incentive programs to encourage development of affordable housing, but in many rural areas, we are not seeing any new housing development, much less affordable housing development, so these programs do not have much impact on our communities. In the end, much of our less-expensive housing units are old, dilapidated, and may contain hazardous building materials or mold that is not healthy for tenants.

I think we can develop innovative programs that can help coordinate federal, state, and local programs and laws to improve affordable housing.

1. Support existing incentives and develop more financial incentives like tax credits and deductions for property management and rehabilitation of older affordable housing, including removing hazardous building materials. In the process, we also need to support and encourage more people to become responsible landlords.
2. Support, defend, and improve the Community Reinvestment Act that applies to banks and ensures financing for low income housing.
3. Provide communities, through social service and community development agencies, with technology tools to support a wide range of tenants and landlords in transparency, accountability, and problem-solving so that we have a better path from homelessness into temporary housing and long-term housing while helping both tenants and landlords comply with legal requirements and financial responsibility.
4. Focus on increasing the voucher values for Section 8 housing to expand the universe of housing units that can participate in the program and work much more proactively to increase the number of dedicated Section 8 units in every community across our region.
5. Expand our rural transportation capacity by coordinating county senior transportation and regional bus/van networks so that they can run more often and connect up to each other to more effectively support people going to work or appointments throughout the day.