Area housing costs hit some people hard
By Christina Beam
wiscnews.com
August 23, 2005
Wisconsin Dells - When caseworker Brian Downey sees a new
client who's behind on rent and about to become homeless, one
of the questions he asks them is if they have a plan.
"Usually their plan is to seek more work," said
Downey, whose agency, Central Wisconsin Community Action
Coalition, helped over 300 area people pay their rent in the
first six months of this year alone.
But sometimes more work is simply not enough.
Despite a public perception that homelessness is caused by
joblessness, research shows that adequate housing in this
area is still out of reach for many full-time workers.
"Housing costs are too high and there aren't enough good
paying jobs in Sauk County to support the amount of young
families ... who want to work," said Kelly Wilcock,
executive director of the Sauk County Housing Authority.
While housing costs in rural Sauk or Columbia counties may be
lower than in cities like Madison, so are rural incomes,
according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition
(NLIHC). A more important consideration is what percentage of
a family's income is taken up by rent � the generally
accepted standard for "affordable" housing is not
more than 30 percent of household income.
In Columbia County the median income for renters is $32,468.
A family earning that much per year would have to spend 56
percent of its income to rent an average 3-bedroom apartment
in the county.
In Sauk County a renter must earn $14.96 per hour to afford
the average 3-bedroom apartment, while in Adams County rent
for the same apartment would eat up 61 percent of the median
renter's income.
Prospects for a minimum-wage earner finding affordable
housing are more dire. An Adams County household making
minimum wage would have to work 100 hours per week to live in
a 3-bedroom unit; in Sauk County that figure is 116 hours, in
Columbia County it's 123 hours.
When families devote a higher percentage of their income to
rent than they can afford, unexpected expenses can put them
behind in rent and on the road to homelessness. A Dells area
landlord told CWCAC's housing coordinator Susan Tucker that
when tenants hit hard times, he gets what's left over after
they have paid to keep the lights, heat and water on.
Tucker has seen families who owe $2,400 in back rent.
"There's nothing we can do to clean that up," she
said.
An important part of CWCAC's housing program is eviction
prevention, which assists families on the brink of
homelessness with back rent and overdue utility bills.
"We'd much rather see people when they're a month or two
behind on their rent than see them when they're
homeless," Tucker said.
"Project Chance," a transitional housing program
run by CWCAC, encourages housing stability and
self-sufficiency while helping get low-income people into
affordable rental units.
Renewal Unlimited also offers rental assistance to those who
earn less than 80 percent of the median income in Sauk,
Columbia, Adams and Juneau counties.
The majority of their rental assistance clients are in the
bottom 30 percent, said Suzanne Hoppe, Renewal Unlimited's
executive director.
"We see clients come to us who have been living in
vehicles or tents, but when winter approaches it becomes more
difficult to survive in that kind of situation," Hoppe
said.
Renewal Unlimited helps the homeless into housing through the
Department of Commerce's "Housing Organization and
Direct Assistance Program" (HODAP), where they can
provide a renter's security deposit and up to three months'
rent. About 15 people per month received rental assistance
last year, Hoppe said.
That number has been increasing even as the Department of
Commerce cut the agency's rental assistance funds by 35
percent in the annual grant administered last month.
"There were more applicants for funding and less dollars
available, so the state tried to make it stretch to as many
agencies as they could," Hoppe said.
The agency will not limit its services, she said, it will
probably just run out of money some time next spring and have
to start a waiting list until the next grant comes in July.
The problem of more people vying for less money seems to be
true across the board when dealing with the homeless.
"The slight upswing in the economy does not appear to
have hit mid-America yet," Tucker said. From January to
June 2004 CWCAC helped 91 people with eviction prevention.
During that same period this year, they've seen 302.
That drastic increase means families who may have received
$500 in assistance before now get about half that.
CWCAC also distributes HUD's Section 8 housing vouchers to
Columbia and Adams counties and has seen the voucher
allotment for those two counties drop from 147 to 90.
"I suspect families are doubling or tripling up
(now)," Tucker said.
This year the Sauk County Housing Authority was only funded
at 90 percent for its Section 8 housing, resulting in a
$30,000 deficit that was taken from the agency's reserves.
"Congress has a lot of priorities and right now putting
money into HUD is not one of them," Wilcock said.
Despite the cuts, the agency recently broke ground on the
24-unit High Pointe Commons senior housing complex in
Baraboo, an addition to their 40 other public housing units
in the county.
"(The Housing Authority's Board of Directors) is
committed and pretty adamant that we are not going to reduce
services," Wilcock said. "They want to build more
affordable apartments as fast as we can. They know the
need."
There are a few privately-operated affordable housing
complexes in the area, but most developers are not interested
in building low-income housing, especially in high-price
areas like Wisconsin Dells.
"It's the city's responsibility to plan for it and
encourage it," Tucker said.
Wilcock agreed. "Every official I've talked to knows
there's a problem. We shouldn't put our heads in the sand and
pretend there's not," he said. "Sometimes they just
need to be creative because there's just not the funds."
For Part One of this series, please click here.