Buy The economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic has made it difficult for many people to pay their bills. Millions are facing unemployment and financial instability for the first time, and for those who were struggling before the pandemic hit, COVID-19 has only made things worse.
This includes many people in Crawford County, where the unemployment rate has gone from 5.3 percent in February to 16.8 percent at the end of April. These are Great Depression levels.
And we shouldn’t forget that even before the crisis hit, 1 in 4 Crawford County households could not cover the basic cost of living. Likewise, 52 percent of Meadville did not have enough income to afford basic needs like housing, food, and healthcare. In effect, many were one crisis away from total financial catastrophe.
Now that the crisis has hit, few have sufficient economic resources to fall back on.
Thankfully, conversations are taking place about how to recover from the crisis. One area of focus should be housing, particularly the significant lack of affordable housing in our region.
According to the 2019 Crawford County Housing Plan, 41 percent of renter households in the County are “cost-burdened,” meaning they struggle to pay rent, while 21 percent are paying more than 50 percent of their incomes on rent, making them “severely rent-burdened.”
The numbers are more dire in Meadville, where renter households make up 60 percent of the city, and more than half of them (52 percent) are cost-burdened; 27 percent spend more than half their income on rent. This effectively amounts to an affordable housing crisis in the city — one that will surely be compounded by the long-term economic effects of the coronavirus.
So how do we confront this crisis?
One obvious answer is increasing housing assistance.
The Housing Choice Voucher program (otherwise known as Section 8) is the main form of government rent assistance for the elderly, the disabled, and low-income families. Recipients pay 30 to 40 percent of their monthly income toward rent and the voucher covers the rest. If you meet income requirements, you become eligible.
The problem is vouchers are in short supply.
Source: Meadville Tribune
Today, the Meadville Housing Authority manages 124 Standard Housing Choice Vouchers, and it has the capacity to issue 31 additional vouchers provided there is increased federal funding to support them. On March 16, Section 8 applications reopened for first time in Meadville since 2012. According to Executive Director Bill Thomas, the MHA issued over 200 applications over a two week period, with 100 people lined up outside the central office on the first day.
That means 100 people got up at the crack of dawn just for the opportunity to apply for a handful of vouchers in the hope of gaining some financial relief from a government program that, in effect, is akin to winning the lottery for many families.
This was before the pandemic struck.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning study of America’s housing crisis, Matthew Desmond writes, “Many Americans still believe that the typical low-income family lives in public housing. But only one in four families who qualify for housing assistance receive it.” That is, many more people find themselves on the waiting list than in affordable homes.
Locally, 49 percent of Meadville residents (roughly 2,659 households) qualify for some kind of housing assistance. Yet, only 682 affordable units are available for rent in Meadville, according to affordablehousing.com’s index for the city, which includes an inventory of all public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, subsidized housing, and income-based apartments. Given the overriding number of people who qualify for help, this effectively means that nearly three in four households who are eligible for housing assistance receive nothing.
Clearly, this is a problem. So, again, what can be done?
“Congress has to make this a priority,” says Thomas. For the past 50 years, conservative politicians have worked to defund federal housing assistance programs, which makes it all the more imperative to bring money in when it’s available.
An easy way to do this in the short term is to simply fill out your 2020 Census form. Since the census is used to determine how much money is distributed for a variety of federal programs, including Section 8 Vouchers, completing the form is one thing Crawford County residents can do to help their neighbors, relatives, and friends gain more access to federal housing assistance. According to the Census Bureau, each person who fails to fill out their 2020 Census form equates to approximately $2,000 less for the state.
By increasing participation in the census, the county can receive more money for programs that benefit our most vulnerable residents.
It’s not a fix to our affordable housing problem, but it’s a start.
