Housing Just Isn’t Affordable

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy

A new National Low Income Housing Coalition (a Care for the Homeless advocacy partner we’ve worked with advocating for affordable housing for extremely-low income Americans) study reports the average hourly wage a full-time (40 hour-a-week, 52 week a year) required to afford an average two-bedroom apartment is $18.92 an hour.

In a more expensive housing market, finding affordable housing in New York City is much harder. Two-thirds of New Yorkers rent (the national average is about one-third, so affordable rent is more critical here). One-third (1 million) of city tenant households are “rent-burdened” according to HUD (they define households spending over 30% of gross income on housing as “rent-burdened” - their housing isn’t affordable for them). More staggering, 600,000 New Yorkers (20% of all renters) pay over 50% of household income for housing (HUD defines that as “severely rent-burdened”). Several recent studies document New York rents are rising much faster than income.

Most shocking, among extremely-low income New Yorkers (for example a family of 3 earning up to $22,450 – which includes households with both a full-time and half time minimum wage worker) 88% are rent burdened. Even among very-low income tenant households at up to $37,350 annual income, 81% are rent-burdened.

Mayor de Blasio is releasing a plan to save or create 200,000 units of affordable housing over a decade. That’s more, at a faster pace, than ever before in New York City or anywhere in the United States. City Council has proposed more affordable housing funding, including specific new funding resources. This week Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer proposed still more funding, including a program to move some Department of Homeless Services funding to affordable housing as the city can close emergency shelters by moving people experiencing homelessness to newly created stable housing.

All three plans include two major Care for the Homeless policy agenda items: a robust, flexible rental subsidy to move people from city shelters to stable housing and re-instituting a plan to use about one-third of Section 8 housing vouchers and NYCHA public housing units targeted to people living in city shelters. These are important steps on the journey to end homelessness as we know it.

Popular posts from this blog

Join Us on Mon, June 22nd for 2nd Annual Summer Solstice Success Celebration!

Image
Join Care for the Homeless and our Client Leaders on Monday, June 22 nd at 4:30 p.m. in celebrating the health care successes of homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers. The 2 nd Annual CFH Summer Solstice Success Celebration will feature live entertainment, fun and the opportunity to recognize the successes of our clients and thank the providers who delivery high quality, client centered services every day. “So often people focus on the bad news coming out of the shelter system,” said David Broxton, a formerly homeless cancer survivor and Care for the Homeless client. “We want to put the focus on the successes of New Yorkers who have experienced homelessness - people do get back on their feet with the right services available to them.”   The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the dining room and gardens at Red Oak Apartments, 135 W. 106 th Street in Manhattan, on Monday, June 22, at 4:30 p.m. In addition to celebrating health care stories of success
Read more

CFH Executive Director Bobby Watts Responds to Police Homeless Photos on Pix11

Image
Care for the Homeless Executive Director Bobby Watts was featured last night on Pix11 news to talk about an initiative by the Sergeant Benevolent Association to photograph homeless New Yorkers on the street. The officers are posting their pictures to an online Flicker photo album in an attempt to expose a supposed “decrease in quality of life in NYC” but what these pictures really highlight are the difficulties of life on the street. Whatever the politics of the initiative, we know that it’s crucial to find real fixes for the problems of people experiencing homelessness.  “I don’t take a position on the letter or motivation. I really focus on results,” Bobby Watts, executive director of Care for the Homeless, told PIX11 News. “To the extent that more people are aware of homelessness and are determined to find solutions, that can be helpful.” If you see someone in need of services on the street, call 3-1-1 to alert city homeless outreach teams. Click here to watch the full
Read more

Provider Profile Vol. 5 | Dr. Andrea Littleton

Image
Addressing the Whole Person Dr. Littleton with a Patient The streets outside the Care For the Homeless (CFH) Health Center (located at the Living Room/Safe Haven Shelter) rattle with a rhythm that should be familiar to most New Yorkers. Semi-trucks blow by, footsteps patter on the sidewalk, and the nearest park teems with laughing children. Across the street, a Dominican monastery stands as tall and proud as the day it was built in 1891, adding a touch of history to the area. Conversely, the rhythm inside the halls of the shelter and health center are anything but familiar. Located in the Bronx, the Living Room/Safe Haven a is a 24-hour, open access drop-in site, meaning anyone experiencing street homelessness is welcome to come in and spend time off the streets. CFH site partner BronxWorks offers hot meals, showers, laundry, and housing services to compliment the medical services provided by CFH. Despite the similarities it shares with other CFH sites, the Living Ro
Read more

Sophie Cares for the Homeless

Image
This young lady couldn’t stop giggling during her health check-up by Sophie As a Nurse Practitioner, Sophie cares for homeless individuals in New York City in her own special way. She started working at Care for the Homeless only two months after graduating from Yale University with her Master’s Degree in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner. Sophie is originally from Portland, Oregon. She received her bachelor’s from Occidental College in Los Angeles, California in 2013 and moved to New York City in 2014 when she started her studies at Yale. Sophie says her mentors at Yale referred her to Care for the Homeless (CFH), where she now practices medicine at two CFH health centers, one in Queens and the other in the Bronx. She enjoys working at CFH because she is always “learning from [her] patients.” She says coming from Oregon to living in New York and working at CFH, she learned a lot about the challenges the city brings and the “incredible resilience” that is needed to live i
Read more

Reducing Eligibility to Life Saving Services

Image
The current administration has continuously targeted federal benefit programs important to low-income Americans for drastic cuts. A new effort follows suit by proposing a change to how the ‘poverty threshold’ is to be calculated, which will decrease the number of people eligible for important federal benefit programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. This would affect millions of extremely low-income individuals and families. The current measurement called the “consumer price index (CPI)” has been used for a long time to set the annualized increases in the official poverty threshold. The administration is considering using what is known as “the chained CPI”, a different inflation measure that would result in a slower annual increase of inflation over time. “Chained CPI” assumes that as the prices of goods go up, individuals substitute less expensive items, thereby reducing their overall expenses. Why is this important? The proposed change wou
Read more