Affordable Housing
About CHISPA > Affordable Housing
What is affordable housing?
According to the federal government, housing is considered affordable if it costs no more than 30% of the monthly household income for rent and utilities. If your household income is $60,000 a year, you should pay no more than $1500 monthly for your mortgage or rent and utilities. If you are a in a retail sales or agriculture job, making $12.00 per hour, you should be paying no more than $624 a month in rent and utilities.
Housing in Monterey County is among the most expensive in the nation. Someone you know is probably struggling with the escalating costs of housing in every community. Several factors combine to create this housing crunch: wages have not kept pace with housing costs; relatively low paying sales and service jobs are proliferating while housing options for lower wage jobs are minimal; new industries in Silicon Valley create a premium demand for any housing; land values remain high and housing production is not meeting the demand.
Who needs affordable housing?
Most people haven't had an opportunity to find out about contemporary affordable housing. Today's affordable housing serves families, seniors and people with disabilities. Affordable housing provides a stepping-stone for young families, a stable place to get back on one's feet for vulnerable community members, and a cost-effective living situation for persons with special needs. The housing can be ownership or rental, a single-family home or the size of many market rate apartment complexes. Affordable housing developments meet local building standards and design requirements. Professional on site resident management includes stringent tenant selection and quick response to maintenance requests. Many developments have won design awards.
How is affordable housing developed?
Affordable housing is developed by private developers, mostly non-profits, many of which are local community or faith based organizations, using a combination of rental income, private funding and government subsidies. Over the past decade, many communities in Monterey County have shown that partnerships among local and private financial institutions can create attractive, successful affordable housing developments that not only serve residents, but are an asset to the broader community. At the federal level, massive cuts in the funding available for affordable housing threaten to undermine these productive public/private partnerships because local governments depend upon federal subsidies to stretch their limited funds.
Affordable housing provides community-wide benefits
In addition to helping residents, contemporary affordable housing benefits the wider community in significant ways. Typical benefits include:
- Providing housing for the local workforce, especially lower wage earners
- Revitalizing distressed areas
- Directing economic benefits to the local community, such as increased jobs and sales taxes
- Promoting economic and social integration while building community
- Avoiding unnecessary, costly public expenditures by providing stable living situations for low-income people and people with special needs