This much is clear: the rent’s too damn high and the wages are too low. While people feel these pains in the most local of ways — with widespread homelessness and housing insecurity — it’s funds from the federal level that make the most impact.
Keep your eyes on Congress.
During the pandemic, stimulus and unemployment funds provided lifelines, but unfortunately, these dried up, even though the need is severe.
Labor Day was a particularly devastating day for those who don’t earn wages for their labor — 7.5 million people lost unemployment benefits nationwide — more than 100,000 people in Oregon, according to the Century Foundation.
This blow to people’s income can’t just be replaced by jobs — because those wages are too low. Let me put it this way: I’ve known too many people living in tents while working minimum wage service jobs.
Poverty wages do not prevent homelesssness, and that’s because of the canyon-sized chasm between the minimum wage and a housing wage — the amount a person needs to earn for 30% of their income to go toward rent. For a two-bedroom rental in Oregon, the housing wage is $25.14 (and it’s an astonishing $29.54 in Portland).
Meanwhile, the urgently needed emergency rental assistance only staunches the bleed for the short term, filling the back rent to, at best, prevent eviction. As Street Roots has reported over the past month, administrative backlogs jeopardize that eviction prevention.
People don’t just need back rent. They need to afford going rent forward.
As Bobby Weinstock, a longtime organizer and visionary with Northwest Pilot Project, said in the Aug. 25 edition of Street Roots, “Rent subsidies are necessary to create deeply affordable housing. That was true prior to COVID-19, and it’s even more true now.” He called for making “the federal Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program an entitlement.”
As it is right now, both locally and nationally, the U.S. HUD provides only a quarter of the vouchers needed.
There’s some hope as Congress wrestles with its infrastructure package and budget. Both U.S. Senators from Oregon have pushed for universal vouchers.
Last week Sen. Ron Wyden introduced his DASH Act — Decent, Affordable, Safe Housing for all — that includes a five-year roll out of housing vouchers. This funding would begin by providing 250,000 vouchers to housing authorities across the country, and amping up to 400,000 vouchers annually until all people who make 50% the median income or less can access voucher.
And Sen. Jeff Merkeley has championed the agenda put forward by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that includes universal voucher programs as well as funding for public housing and major investments in the National Housing Trust Fund.
I turned to the local housing authority that administers these vouchers, Home Forward. Monica Foucher, the Public Relations Associate Director, wrote in an email they “enthusiastically support proposals to expand the voucher program to actually meet the need,” but also added a note of caution: “We would like to see Congress and HUD make changes like increasing funding per voucher, so that people can better meet their housing needs. We would also need to plan for and invest in making sure there is capacity (service supports) to effectively deliver these resources.”
This comment is particularly salient in light of the administrative challenges of getting federal emergency rent assistance — which flows through Home Forward in Multnomah County — to people who need it.
I began this column lamenting the loss of federal income — stimulus money and unemployment benefits — and end it by calling for pulling out all the stops to make housing affordable.
As always, we need both higher pay and federal money to make rent more affordable.
The Congressional path forward is one mired in political wrangling and arcane rules, but the stakes are enormous. Keep the pressure on Congress. Follow the National Low Income Housing Coalition agenda. Fight for more.
Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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