The need for affordable housing in Santa Barbara was glaringly apparent at Saturday's first homeownership opportunity meeting that
Habitat for Humanity held at the Eastside Library. We expected 20-30 families to attend the first of six meetings. All told, over 150 families attended the meeting and received a full application.
This means that these 150 families showed:
a) their need for adequate housing (meaning they currently live in overcrowded apartments, transitional housing, or are considered "cost-burdened" and spend over 50% of their income on rent;
b) are US citizens;
c) have lived and or worked in Santa Barbara for the past year.
And this was just the first of six meetings that Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County will hold this week for interested applicants of the 12 new homes which will be built on Canon Perdido Street. The dates and times of the remaining meetings can be found
here.
An article in today's
Noozhawk by Craig Allen: "
Escalating Rents Make It Tough on Renters Who Can't Afford to Buy" sheds light on why so many in our community currently live in substandard housing (which we define as overcrowded, cost-burdened, or transitional). In the article Allen reports that while home prices have fallen since 2008, one side effect is that rental prices have increased. And we have seen that this drastically affects the low and very-low income families in Santa Barbara the hardest.
"The median rent asked in Santa Barbara is $2,053, which is about 53
percent higher than the median rent in California as a whole"
"A good rule of thumb is that renters should spend no more than 30
percent of their net earnings on their rent expense. So, for every $500
in rent, the renter should earn at least $1,667 after tax. According to a
recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition,
only renters in 37 of the nation’s 582 metropolitan regions considered
in the report meet this goal. In fact, according to the report, in most
parts of the country, rental prices vastly exceed the 30 percent
threshold of the average renter’s wages."
The need for affordable housing and Habitat for Humanity homes in our community is apparent. We hope you'll join Habitat in making affordable and permanent housing accessible for the many families in Santa Barbara who are priced out of a traditional mortgage and out of decent rental prices.
