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New townhouses, like these off Gordon Road in Spotsylvania, are going up, but affordable housing still remains a problem for many residents in the fast-growing Fredericksburg area. |
Chrystie Logan has jumped through all the hoops. She's taken a class on first-time home-buying. She's whittled down her debt. She's filled out forms, gone to meetings--everything to qualify for a home loan and for closing and down-payment assistance.
There's just one hitch: Each time she finds an affordable house for sale in Fredericksburg, someone snatches it up first.
"It's like a race," said Logan, a seamstress and single mom who pays $835 a month for an apartment in the city. "Whoever gets there first, that's who gets the house."
The supply of low-priced homes doesn't come close to meeting the demand in the Fredericksburg area, especially in the city.
Of the more than 1,000 area homes listed for sale in a June real-estate report, just 49 cost less than $120,000, which is the most Logan can spend.
"It's ridiculous," said Logan, a college graduate whose annual income is about $26,000. "Fredericksburg doesn't have enough [affordable] single-family homes."
A new committee formed by the Rappahannock United Way is looking at ways to address the dearth of affordable homes, both houses and rental properties.
"This is a crisis," said committee member Gail Penman, president of the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors. "It's not something where we can look the other way and say, 'It's not happening in Fredericksburg.'"
The median selling price for homes in the area was $215,500 in June, according to Bethesda-based Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, a real-estate network. It takes a yearly income of about $53,000 to afford a house at that price, according to bankrate.com, an online clearinghouse of mortgage and financial information.
Those who can afford it often commute to well-paying jobs in Washington, where salaries--and home prices--are higher. Stafford and Spotsylvania counties are home to thousands of people who drive up Interstate 95 each morning to work.
Even so, fewer than half the households in the Fredericksburg area make more than $50,000 a year, according to the 2000 Census.
"You can spend four or five years in college and still not be able to earn a sufficient amount to afford a house," said Loraine Lemoine, social services director in Spotsylvania.
Even affording rent can be tough. Penman said rents in North Stafford, where she works, often reach $800 for an apartment. They're usually cheaper in other parts of the region.
Still, "Rents are astronomical here," said committee chairman Gary Parker, executive director of the Fredericksburg-based Central Virginia Housing Coalition. "It's actually cheaper to buy a home now with the low mortgage rates, if you can afford the down payment."
Many people can't, and the situation is getting worse, according to Penman and others who have observed the steady--and in places, steep--climb of home prices and assessments. City property values, for instance, have gone up 40 percent since the last assessment four years ago.
Throughout the area, "Housing prices have gone up significantly in the last 18 to 24 months," said Ric Goss, Spotsylvania County's planning director. "[And] most people would say to you, the income levels have not. So the gap here is growing larger."
At a recent meeting, committee members agreed to examine the housing needs of everyone from the very poorest to those on the high end of the low-income scale.
Remarkably, single people in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and Stafford can make $39,550 a year and still be considered low-income by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which sets the scale.
That income tops the starting salaries of many working professionals, including teachers, social workers and police officers.
Given the price of homes and apartments in the area, the low-income label may be appropriate.
"If you've got somebody making $40,000 with some debt, they're going to have trouble buying the house they want to buy," said Mary Anne Bryant, deputy director of the housing coalition.
'No other way'Programs exist to help people find inexpensive housing, but the programs aren't all well-known, nor are they funded enough to meet every need.
The nonprofit Central Virginia Housing Coalition helps people pay security deposits for apartments and helps cover down payments for those buying homes, among other services.
The city of Fredericksburg uses money from a Community Development Block Grant to, among other things, help with closing costs on homes.
Logan, the seamstress, plans to take advantage of both forms of assistance--if she can find a house in the city not already under contract. If she can't, she'll extend her search to the counties--and forfeit the city help.
Things are already looking up for Trena Low, who worked with the housing coalition to build a home in Spotsylvania. She's paying $125 a month less for her mortgage than she did for rent.
Low considers herself blessed. A single mom working for the Hanover County government, she qualified for down-payment assistance from the coalition.
"For me, there would have been no other way [to buy a house]," Low said. "If you're renting, trying to save is very hard."
Young professionals who don't qualify for help--or don't think to ask--struggle to sock away money for down payments while writing hefty rent checks. The working poor scrimp to afford an apartment.
"If you don't have the first month's rent and you don't have the deposit for the utilities and you don't have the security deposit, you're not going to get in," said Joe Wilson, a Fredericksburg city councilman and committee member. "By the time you add up the deposits, you need $1,500 to $2,000 just to get into an apartment."
Even those who qualify for Section 8 assistance--which helps cover the rent--can't count on getting aid. The federal program isn't funded enough to meet every need, so about 100 people on a local waiting list for Section 8 assistance are going without.
Penman said she hopes the committee will find ways to help working professionals and those in more fragile housing situations.
"Our teachers, our firemen, our policemen cannot live in the counties they work in because their salary does not allow them to afford what is even a median-price house," Penman said. "And then I think, what about the workers who are out there struggling, making minimum wage? Who's helping them?"
Some people resort to living in motels, and Penman and other committee members said they would like to help those people find more permanent housing.
"If they can afford $30 a night to stay in a hotel every night, I mean, that's $900 [a month]," Penman said. "They could get out of that hotel and certainly get into something."
Bad credit, the inability to pay security deposits and other problems keep many motel dwellers out of more stable housing.
To help them and others, the committee wants to promote existing programs. The coalition, for instance, has a program to help people resolve their debt and credit issues.
Mostly, committee members say, their focus will be on researching strategies to put quality housing within the reach of more people.
Housing issues differ somewhat from place to place within the area, so each locality may need different tactics for tackling the problem, Wilson said. Still, the councilman said he hopes regional solutions can be found.
One possibility is creating a regional housing authority. Unlike the nonprofit housing coalition, an authority would be a government agency, probably set up by the localities, and could potentially tap into more federal and state funding. It could also provide low-interest financing to developers building affordable homes.
Another idea the committee wants to explore is encouraging employers to help workers make down payments on homes. In exchange, workers would commit to the company for a certain stretch of time.
Yet another idea is to require or encourage developers to incorporate low-income housing in subdivisions they build. As a trade-off, developers might be freed from paying some fees.
The committee plans to study housing tactics such as these that already exist in other places.
"Maybe we'll find something in another area that has worked and can be fit for this area," said Melissa Papendick, director of community initiatives for the local United Way.
'There is a need'Until now, the shortage of affordable housing hasn't been addressed with an urgency that matches the need, committee members say.
The vexing problem of where to locate the regional homeless shelter has, understandably, been a top concern. But committee members say ensuring adequate housing for people a step above--or even a few steps above--homelessness also deserves attention.
Erik Nelson, senior city planner, said the fact that so many people snatch up expensive homes has kept affordable housing from becoming a pressing issue.
"Every house that's occupied is, theoretically, affordable," Nelson said.
He said compared to other places, the area's needs aren't as dire, so competing for state and federal housing grants can be tough.
"When we talk about this issue with people, say, from Fairfax, they laugh at us," Nelson said. "They say, 'You don't have a problem.'"
Nelson sees a tremendous need for more affordable homes. But pricier homes provide localities with more property-tax revenues, he said, giving governments incentive to approve the construction of big homes.
The result is that even some people who recognize the need for affordable housing haven't felt pressure to address it, Nelson said.
The committee will address it--at monthly meetings through the end of the year. Members plan to present their recommendations to the Rappahannock United Way by the end of December.
Logan hopes her search for a house will be over long before then. She didn't renew her apartment lease, and it expires at the end of this month. If she doesn't have a new home by then, she'll have to move into her parents' house in the city's Mayfield neighborhood, where her dad is pastor of Grace Redemption Church.
Recently, Logan started walking around city neighborhoods on weekends, looking for "For Sale" signs in front of affordable-looking homes.
"I feel like I'm going to start knocking on people's doors and see if they're moving anytime," Logan said. "I'm desperate."
For more information on affordable housing, call the Central Virginia Housing Coalition at 899-9644, visit its Web site, centralva housing.com or check out the Virginia Housing Development Authority's site at vhda.com.
The local United Way may be reached at 373-0041 or online at rappahannockunitedway.org.
To reach JANET MARSHALL: 540/374-5527 jmarshall@freelancestar.com
