Scratchin' Out A Little Living

In 1963 my parents purchased a three-bedroom house in a small town in northern Wisconsin for $13,000. The median home price in the US that year was $18,000. The median annual wage in America in that same year was $6200 and for college grads it was $9700, according to the Consumer Income Report compiled by the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 1964. Sixty years have flown by, and life for most Americans does not make that kind of sense. What kind of sense? The common sense that used to exist where two times your annual income equaled the cost of a family home. The median (the middle amount, not the average) income in the US is about $54,000 a year. I wonder how many of those earners could find a house for around $108,000 that was in a nice neighborhood with good schools, a clean and functional park, and maybe within walking distance to a grocery store or Walgreens. In most major and medium-sized cities (Albuquerque) and even some smaller towns housing costs have skyrocketed. Albuquerque’s rental prices have gone up as much as 22% since 2021, according to a report from KRQE last year. These astronomical housing prices are fueling evictions, homelessness, and high stress that can create chronic high cortisol (a steroid hormone produced by your adrenal glands that helps your body regulate stress) levels that in turn destabilize hormones and can create life threatening health problems like diabetes and high blood pressure as well as uterine fibroid tumors in women. Making rent should not be an extreme sport.

For Americans of working age (18-65+) figuring out how to keep up with the cost of living is proving to be tougher than ever before. We are working longer hours thanks to digital technology that allows us to receive work emails long after we have left the job. When my parents left their jobs, they were done for the day. They did not have email or cell phones to navigate. The work day was simply over. Now, group texts, Zoom meetings, and email threads can flow on long into the evening, and yet, people are still hustling to survive. Work work work and still barely making it. I have a friend working two full-time jobs so that she can pay her bills, eat, and afford a vacation with her collegeage daughters in the summer, and…she lives in a van.

What’s fueling the high rents? Well, there are many articles written about this subject, and some say that there’s such a high demand for fewer homes and apartments that property owners are in a prime position to charge whatever they want because home seekers and renters feel desperate. Other stories talk about the high cost of building materials forcing contractors to charge more. A lack of skilled labor is causing fewer homes and apartments to be built. There’s some truth in all of these stories, but ultimately, a contractor or property owner makes a conscious decision about the amount of profit s/he wants to make. Then a price is charged to the consumer. It’s the unregulated amount of profit to be made that seems to have changed more than anything. Municipal governments rarely enact rent controls. As of 2022, only six states (California, New York, Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland) and the District of Columbia have some form of rent control. Most states actually prohibit it., and then they talk about the homeless problem while ignoring the fact that they have done nothing to create affordable housing for all residents.

Just several hours ago the Biden-Harris Administration announced new actions to protect renters and promote rental affordability in The White House Blueprint For A Renters Bill Of Rights published by the The White House Public Policy Council and The National Economic Council. The 19-page document begins with a legal disclaimer letting readers know that this is just “a statement of principles” and that it’s not binding and doesn’t constitute any government policy. So, basically, it’s a bunch of good ideas that are not enforceable, sort of a best practices guide that landlords and renters should study together. Good luck with that.

So what’s my point? My point is that this country has millions of hard working people who deserve safe, affordable housing, and we may need to observe and take some notes from other countries who are dealing with the same insane rent increases but acknowledging it and facing it head on. Case in point Vienna, Austria (pop. about 2 million). I realize Vienna is far away and seems extremely foreign and European…because it is, but look at what they are doing to confront billion- dollar developers that keep raising prices in their city. The city owns 220,000 apartments (called social housing) and rents them to mostly low-income folks, but they also indirectly manage another 200,000 units that are built by limited profit-private developers, and these units cannot be rented for more than 2025 percent of a person’s income. When these developers wish to build a building, half of their units must be rented to low-income residents who cannot be evicted if their incomes rise at a later date. Annually, the city adds about 5,000 new units each year. There are so many affordable housing units in the city that market rate developers must lower their own prices if they wish to remain competitive in the housing market. The Vienna plan keeps people off the streets and creates a more equitable housing situation for everyone. Of course, the city of Vienna has been the center of art and culture since the 1440’s, so it has had time to reflect on how to best care for its residents. Could we even imagine limited-profit private developers? Would that feel unAmerican? How about homelessness?

In 1963 home prices made sense. Wages matched the cost of living. I’m not saying life was easy then because it wasn’t. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed the same year. Life was intense and changing fast. We’ve entered 2023, and the cost to live and eat in this country is becoming increasingly difficult for Americans who work every day. What can we do as a city, state, and a nation to thoughtfully create affordable housing for every citizen so that we can all live lives of dignity? Remember, we’re all in this together.