Lisa Huval
Many parents making minimum wage do not earn enough to afford an apartment for their families.
During the recession, much of our country’s housing-related focus has been on the foreclosure crisis. While millions of middle-class Americans have experienced a housing crisis through foreclosure, there is a parallel but hidden crisis among low-income working families who are renters.
This crisis developed long before the housing bubble burst, but has been greatly exacerbated by the recession. Two recent studies show just how hard it is for low-income working families to find safe, decent affordable housing in New Mexico.
According to Out of Reach 2012: America’s Forgotten Housing Crisis, which was jointly released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the NM Coalition to End Homelessness, the housing wage for New Mexico is $12.70 an hour. The housing wage is the hourly wage a family must earn – working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year – to be able to afford the rent and utilities for a safe and modest home in the private housing market.
This means that working at the minimum wage in New Mexico a family must have 1.7 wage earners working full-time – or one full-time earner working 68 hours per week to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.
Since 42 percent of New Mexico’s children are part of single-parent families, this means many parents making minimum wage do not earn enough to afford an apartment for their families. Decent rental housing is even out of reach for low-income families with two-wage earners – in the current economy, many adults who would like to work full time are only able to find part-time work.
Not enough housing
Last month, the NLIHC released another study that found an enormous gap between the number of extremely low-income households in New Mexico and the number of affordable rental units that are available to those households. For every 100 extremely low-income households in New Mexico, there are only rental 30 units that are affordable and available to them.
The report also found that 75 percent of extremely low income households had a severe housing cost burden, meaning they spent more than 50 percent of their household income on rent and utilities.
This has left thousands of New Mexican families struggling to find safe, decent housing that is affordable on their low incomes. This gap between what people can afford and what is available to rent means many families have unstable or substandard housing. In many cases, families experience the worst-case scenario – homelessness – and must sleep in shelters, in their cars on in motels.
During the 2010-2011 academic school year, Albuquerque Public Schools Title I Homelessness Program served over 6,000 homeless children.
There are solutions
While the situation is dire for thousands of low-income New Mexican renters, solutions are readily available. The solution to the affordable housing shortage is simple: We must increase the supply of affordable housing, particularly for those in greatest need. This needs to be a combination of constructing or rehabilitating new units and expanding the housing voucher programs that help low-income households pay for housing that would otherwise be unaffordable to them.
The State Legislature and the governor recently made at least one move in the right direction. The FY13 state budget that was recently signed by the governor includes $3 million for the N.M. Housing Trust Fund, which will be used to rehab and construct single-family homes and rental units for moderate and low-income New Mexicans.
The N.M. Housing Trust Fund not only increases the supply of affordable housing, it is also good for the economy. The New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority estimates that the N.M. Housing Trust Fund awards to date have generated between $150 and $200 million in local income (business income and wages), between $14 and $18 million in local government revenues and between 3,500 and 4,000 jobs.
However, on the federal level recent cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) budget could reduce the amount of affordable housing that is available for low-income New Mexicans, including cuts to public housing, community development block grants, HOME Program, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), and Housing for the Elderly (Section 202). More cuts to these critical housing programs are likely in the coming year.
Deep cuts to the HUD budget will deepen the housing crisis in New Mexico for our low-income families. This is unacceptable. We need to increase our investment in affordable housing at the local, state and federal level. While we work to rebuild our economy after the recession, we cannot forget about low income families whose basic housing needs continue to go unmet.
Lisa Huval is the policy and advocacy director for the N.M. Coalition to End Homelessness, where she advocates for solutions to homelessness at the local, state and federal levels.