“How’s the economy doing?” is a deeply personal question. If you own a home and have plenty of money put away, the economy might seem OK, given how weird everything has been since COVID.
But if you’re living in one of the 60 percent of lower-income households in Bartholomew County that spends half or more of total income on housing, this economy is not working for you.
Far too many working people in Bartholomew County cannot afford rent. Homeownership for them is a part of the American dream that at the moment seems to be fading away.
As The Republic’s Andy East reported Sunday, about 1,150 households in Bartholomew County are now spending more than half of their paychecks on housing. Financial advisers have long advocated the “30% Rule” — households should spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
East’s reporting said that amid a shortage of affordable housing in the county, even the available options are declining. There are only 47 affordable units for every 100 renters who make 30% or less of the median income in Bartholomew County, just 25 such units per 100 renters in Jennings County and only 30 units per 100 renters in Jackson County, according to a report from advocacy group Prosperity Indiana and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Certainly the pandemic has worsened the affordable housing crisis — and let’s call it what it is, a crisis — but the problem of unaffordable housing has been building for years. To afford a market-based two-bedroom apartment in Bartholomew County, a worker would have to earn $17.33 an hour — an annual salary of about $36,000, according to Prosperity Indiana. One out of four workers in the county earned less than that in 2020.
High housing costs here also may explain in part why, as of 2018, more than 13,000 people who work in Bartholomew County lived elsewhere.
People who work for a living should be able to afford a place to live. What kind of nation are we that this state of affairs is acceptable? What is the incentive for people to work for a living if they cannot afford a place to live?
Andrew Bradley, policy director at Prosperity Indiana, told East his organization is urging lawmakers to take an “all-of-the-above policy approach” to make up the deficit in affordable housing, including what he said was a “lack of incentives” for developers to build more affordable units.
We agree, but we would go farther. Government, nonprofits and the private sector need to work in concert on creative solutions to ensure affordable housing is widely available in communities statewide. Incentives for builders, landowners and landlords should be generous and again, creative. Nonprofits should have wide latitude to work on affordable housing initiatives and partner with public and private entities to make it a priority.
This starts with leaders realizing the scope of the problem. As East reported, “poor Hoosiers now have the worst housing cost burden in the Midwest.”
We ignore this at our peril. Leadership from the highest levels of state government, the business community and the nonprofit sectors must find ways to ensure that working people can afford the basics of life.
Because if we can’t manage that, eventually, everyone’s economy will suffer.
