Reader Writes: CHW hikes rent making "affordable housing" no longer affordable

A couple of weeks ago, community and local leaders were invited to Manzanita, the apartment complex where I live here in Escondido, to celebrate the renovation of this affordable housing complex.

Unfortunately, the owners, Community HousingWorks, have decided they're going to start making the residents pay for these renovations. We all just got rent increase notices of around $50 a month starting in July. Now $50 may not seem like a lot to many people, but it is when you're a Senior living on Social Security or someone who is disabled living on a low fixed income. In reality, our rents are barely now just below market rate. This complex is no longer "affordable." This will likely force some of the residents to stand in local food bank lines just to have enough to eat or to cut back on necessary medications to pay the rent.

This is absolutely unconscionable. Clearly, the growing population of homeless Seniors is a concern to our County Board of Supervisors, since they just approved funds for 260 new affordable housing units in other areas of the county. I guess the folks at CHW didn't get the memo.

CHW needs to rescind these rate hikes immediately and develop a more reasonable plan for handing rent increases. The leasing office was filled with people yesterday upset about this, since many had already just recently had their rent increased.