When I mention that a big part of what we do here at Love Wins Ministries revolves around the homeless, many people automatically think I mean people with no jobs. People with no money. And sometimes, that is true. However, a lot of the people I know do work… they just do not earn enough to survive.
If these folks have a job, why are they homeless? There are a lot of reasons, but let me give you one: lack of affordable housing. Here is an example – I know of a guy that lives in the shelter. Right now his Mom is keeping his daughter, whom he has custody of. But he really wants to get an apartment, so they can be together. His Mom really wants this too.
But look at what he is up against.
Most sources agree that in order for your rent to be considered affordable, it should be no more than 30% of the renter’s income.
In Wake County, a two bedroom apartment has a Fair Market Rent* of $797 a month. To stay within the 30% guideline, my friend would need a household income of $31,880 a year. If he worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, he needs to make $15.33 an hour to be able to afford to live there. And make no mistake, many property managers will not rent to you if you do not meet that 30% criteria.
Put another way, at minimum wage, he would need 2.3 full time 40 hour a week jobs, working 52 weeks a year to make that two bedroom apartment affordable.
Who does not make $15.33 an hour?
Home Health Workers
Cashiers
Retail Sales People
Bank Tellers
Receptionists
Security Guards
Restaurant Workers
Preschool Teachers
Many nonprofit employees
In addition, most apartment complexes want at least a one month deposit, in our case $797, in addition to the first month of rent, another $797. If you are keeping track, that is $1594, plus whatever water and electrical deposits he would have to pay. Before he puts a can of beans in his kitchen, he has to have over $1600 in cash, or, if he is making the $15.33 an hour he needs to afford this apartment, he needs to have saved about 130 hours of pay after taxes.
And he still would have no furniture, no food, no beds… nothing but a place inside.
And people wonder why the poor sometimes give up hope.
*A wealth of information on housing policy can be found at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Here is the page for Wake County.
Hugh – Thank you for bringing this issue up – I can understand the dilemma – it isn’t even easy for middle class america to afford housing today. If we don’t do something about the cost of housing there will only end up being more homeless people/families. I was talking to someone about this recently and wondered if our obsession with more and bigger and mine and personal privacy are the real problems. If we had smaller homes or had more families living together in the larger homes some of our problems might be solved. I have a single friend whose children are grown and on their own and she has two empty bedrooms. She had a woman from her church who had a string of bad luck come and live with her for a while (the woman was around 60 had been laid off, home destroyed by fire and car wreck that totalled her car all within a short period of time). The woman was annoying (nothing life altering – just annoying) and it took her longer than my friend thought was reasonable to get a new job – although the woman did get a job. My friend ended up asking the woman to leave her home (gave her one month’s notice) after about 5 months. The woman found a room to rent at someone else’s home and on the weekend she was to move out the deal to rent the room didn’t work out for some reason. My friend stuck to her guns and doesn’t know where the woman ended up staying because she “was just tired of fooling with the woman and wanted her privacy back” Don’t get me wrong – my friend is a nice christian woman and at least she did do something – and I don’t know what I would have ended up doing since I know we don’t always do what we think we would – but the situation made me think “there is something wrong with this picture”
[...] In this excellent article in the International edition of the New York Times, the author profiles a family that lives in a motel in California. This is sad, but it is NOT rare. I see this a lot, especially when a family can afford the $200 a week to stay in a motel, but cannot save the nearly $2000 to move into an apartment (I explained how that works here.) [...]