Affordable housing fund helps stabilize families, lessens needs for other social services
The coronavirus pandemic is gutting state and local budgets while increasing the cost of emergency services and throwing more families into crisis. To cope with Lexington’s revenue shortfall, Mayor Gorton has proposed a stark budget for the fiscal year starting this July. Social services and the arts take heavy hits. The community may rally to provide private support for more crucial services and valued programs until city revenues are normalized. For some people, stimulus funds that arrived in their bank account were pure windfall because their income or job was not in jeopardy. Hopefully, many of those citizens will give serious thought to channeling those funds to critical local services.
Having worked locally in mental health for decades, I winced to see funds reduced for Arbor House, a vital group home for youth in crisis and Green House 17, a shelter for abused women. Though its immediate importance may be less apparent, I was particularly upset with the huge cuts to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) The campaign that led to the fund’s development documented the profound need for affordable housing in Lexington and the fund has become a dynamic engine for leveraging critical investment in affordable housing. There are enough affordable housing projects in the pipeline that the coming fiscal year could produce the largest number of new affordable units in the program’s history with a level of city investment that is less than half of past costs per unit. This will not occur if the AHTF is depleted.
Unlike other social programs the AHTF helps create jobs and increase the city’s tax base—it’s more like planting a garden than simply cleaning out a weed patch. Several years ago, a national “Housing First” movement found that people who were homeless often did much better if their housing needs were met first rather than making stable housing contingent upon “cleaning up their act.” In my experience this is even more true of struggling families. Without stable housing children lose continuity in friendships, schooling, skill acquisition, or health and mental health services that are irreplaceable developmental opportunities. A growing body of research is connecting housing instability with later mental health, social, and employment problems. Schools with high levels of student turnover typically perform more poorly. Often affordable housing is that proverbial ounce of prevention that helps create stable families. A shortage of affordable housing also tends to increase prices on substandard apartments and reduce some landlord’s commitment to proper maintenance.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a program that estimates what constitutes a living wage in various communities. For Lexington, they estimate what is necessary to meet basic living expenses for single adults, and various family groupings. Even two parents working full time at minimum wage cannot afford decent housing in Lexington. It is simply more expensive to live in Lexington than to live in surrounding counties. Such concerns prompted the Urban County Council in 2016 to phase in higher minimum wages for Lexington. Unfortunately, that wise move was negated when the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the minimum wage could only be raised statewide and only by legislation. It would be great if more people who work in Lexington, could afford to live in Lexington!
T. Kerby Neill is a retired child psychologist, community volunteer, and board member of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice.