“Having my own home made
me learn that having a place to live was the most important thing of
all. Everything starts its life by having a place to live and a place
to call home. I’m really thankful to my parents, because they
found a great place for me to be and they help raise me every day as
I grow.”
–Jennifer Lee, age 12
This young girl and her family were able to afford to move into a beautiful home of their own, thanks in part to the work of the Family Housing Fund and our many private and public partners. She senses, as we believe, that the importance of having a place to call home goes far beyond the basic human need for shelter. A home provides the foundation by which individuals, families, and children survive, thrive, and contribute to the vitality of our communities.
Unfortunately, we know that there remain thousands of families in the Twin Cities who are paying too much of their income on housing costs, living in substandard housing or crowded conditions, or without a permanent place to live at all. And, as the population of our metropolitan area changes and grows, the need for new affordable housing grows with it. Here are a just a few statistics on the need for affordable housing that demonstrate the challenge our community faces:
• Nearly 300,000 low-income Minnesota households are currently “cost burdened” or paying more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing costs, according to an independent research study funded by the Family Housing Fund, the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, and the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (Next Decade of Housing Study, November, 2003). In the Twin Cities metro area, 171,000 or 46 percent of low-income households are considered cost-burdened. In addition, the study results forecast an unmet need for an additional 33,000 (22,000 in the metro area) affordable housing units for low-income households in Minnesota by 2010. This number is over and above the projected 26,400 housing units the private market and public and philanthropic sectors are expected to provide by 2010, assuming current funding levels continue. This is a conservative estimate because it does not fully take into account homeless households or the loss of existing affordable housing through demolition or market rate conversions.
• Housing costs remain far out of reach for most low- and moderate-income families in the Twin Cities. While tight vacancy rates eased and increases in rent and home prices slowed, even full time employment does not guarantee access to affordable housing. In 2004, the average two-bedroom apartment in the metro area rented for $930 per month, and a modest two-to-three bedroom house sold for approximately $189,000. A family would have to earn nearly $37,000 per year ($18 per hour) to be able to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment or $59,000 per year ($28 per hour) to afford the purchase price on an average modest house. More than half the jobs in Minnesota pay less than $31,000 (many much less), including school bus driver, teacher assistant, bank teller, and child care worker, to name a few. For more information about the gap between salaries and housing costs, see Working Doesn’t Always Pay for a Home fact sheet (.pdf).
• After a decade of dramatic growth, the number of children who were homeless in Minnesota leveled off according to the 2003 Wilder Research Center’s survey of homelessness. However, homelessness among individuals, families, and children remain at intolerable levels. On any given night, the study estimates that nearly 9,000 people (including 2,862 children) are homeless or living in transitional housing in Minnesota. Also, the number of homeless individuals who were working was down from 41 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2003, most likely from a slowing economy. Homelessness affects a person’s ability to gain and retain employment and their ability to make significant changes in their lives. We also know that homelessness negatively affects a child’s health, development, behavior and school performance. For more information about the links between stable housing and school performance, see Kids Mobility Project (.pdf). For more information about the impact homelessness has on a child’s development, see The Effects of Homelessness on Children fact sheet (.pdf).