AFFORDABLE Housing Crunch Worsens
Our chapter has formed a housing committee in order to explore how to increase the housing opportunities for Bucks County mental health consumers. Obtaining independent housing with access to services in the community is a primary goal of the committee. Having one's own home, whether it is an apartment, a furnished room, or a house, is the cornerstone of independence for people. With stable permanent housing, people with mental illnesses are able to achieve other important life goals, including improved health, education, job training, and employment.
Unfortunately, access to affordable housing for people with mental illnesses is becoming increasingly difficult. Not only has the gap between income and housing costs grown, but also the existing supply of affordable housing has been reduced due to Federal housing policies. And as the availability of affordable housing decreases, the complexity of creating housing increases.
Without quality, affordable housing, many people with disabilities live on the streets, in homeless shelters, or in inaccessible or substandard housing. For others, the lack of permanent housing results in their remaining in inappropriate institutional settings. These "alternatives" to housing are often more expensive to operate. To create new responses to the housing needs of people with mental illnesses, those involved must understand what these needs are and why they are escalating.
Throughout the 1990's and into the new millennium, the cost of housing in most communities in the country has increased dramatically. For many, this reflected an economic boom during which incomes grew substantially. Unfortunately, this economic increase by-passed many people with mental illnesses. For a majority of low-income people with mental illnesses, their source of income is either Supplemental Security Insurance
(SSI) benefits or wages from sporadic employment, often at minimum wages.
The Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC) and Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities
(CCD) Housing Task Force's Priced Out in 2000: The Housing Crisis Continues documents that, nationwide, people with disabilities receiving SSI benefits had incomes equal to 18.5% of the median income. This figure has remained somewhat constant with SSI levels increasing less than 4% between 1998 and 2000. During this same period, however, housing prices increased at a rate almost double that of SSI levels. This increasing disparity between income and rents led to people with disabilities losing more "buying power" in the rental housing market during the past two years and continuing to be the low-income group with the highest levels of unmet need for housing assistance in the United States. Priced Out in 2000 documents that:
¨People with disabilities continued to be the poorest people in the nation. As a national average, SSI benefits in 2000 were equal to only 18.5% of the one-person median household income and fell below 20% of median income for the first time in over a decade.
¨In 2000, people with disabilities receiving SSI benefits needed to pay - on a national average - 98% of their SSI check to rent a modest one-bedroom unit at the published HUD Fair Market Rent
(FMR). These rent limits are based on the cost of modest rental housing and are calculated annually by HUD for use in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program. A housing unit at the fair market rent is meant to be modest, not luxurious, and to cost less than the typical unit of that bedroom size in that city or county.
¨Cost-of-living adjustments to SSI benefit levels have not kept pace with the increasing cost of rental housing. Between 1998 and 2000, rental-housing costs rose almost twice as much as the income of people with disabilities.
¨In 2000, there was not one single housing market in the country where a person with a disability receiving SSI benefits could afford to rent a modest efficiency or one-bedroom unit.
¨Housing wage data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that people with disabilities receiving SSI benefits needed to triple their income to be able to afford a decent one-bedroom unit. On average, SSI benefits were equal to an hourly rate of $3.23, only one-third of the National Low Income Housing Coalition's housing wage, and almost $2 below the Federal minimum wage.
Over the years, the growing gap between income and housing costs has resulted in an increased number of people with mental illnesses who either cannot afford their housing and have lost it or who hold onto their housing by foregoing other essentials such as food, health care, and clothing. To help people with mental illnesses find and maintain housing, the housing committee plans to identify ways to support consumers so that they can cover the cost of housing.
The NAMI Housing Committee needs your input. Now is the time to volunteer your services. We urge anyone with real estate, developer, financial, or grant writing background to join us and help us to bring needed affordable housing and supported living arrangements to Bucks County. No matter what your skills, we need people willing to work and to learn what is needed in order to bring more housing for mental health consumers to Bucks County.
For information call: 215-343-0372; e-mail: gadfly10@verizon.net
or call 1-866-399-6264
of Bucks County
Pennsylvania
