Op-Ed: Lack of Affordable Housing Today, Hope for Tomorrow

By Cynthia B. Knox

The news keeps flooding in: A recent CBS “60 Minutes” piece painted a devastating picture of homelessness in Seattle, where exorbitant rents have fueled a crisis for those who aren’t wealthy, despite being employed. National stories contrast a seemingly good economy with the dearth of good jobs that can support even modest housing for a single person, let alone families. Here in metropolitan New York, we are experiencing a similar mismatch of earnings and expenses.

But while the problems are well-established, growing, and severe, that doesn’t mean there are no solutions. There are both continuing issues, and innovative responses.

Patterns for Progress, an area non-profit that produced the recently released Housing Needs for Westchester, suggests that the county requires more than 80,000 affordably priced homes, and in excess of 11,000 new units to address the severe lack of housing within economic reach.

Nearly 142,000 households in Westchester, about 41 percent of the county’s total number of households, are paying over 30 percent of their income on housing -- and nearly half of those households pay more than 50 percent. An affordable home for a family of four earning 100 percent of area median income, $117,000, would run about $323,000 in a county where the median home price is nearly double that amount, at $650,000.

A few approaches hold promise.

Around the country, and in upstate New York, there’s a “tiny house” movement. It recognizes the need to offer economical, small structures to people so that looming or actual homelessness can be averted. A Tiny Home for Good, operating upstate in Syracuse, sets rent on a sliding scale for those who have faced homelessness, and provides small but commodious 300 square foot homes. One of their recent projects focused on veterans.

In Westchester, there’s a new model ordinance for accessory dwellings.

What to do with decommissioned shopping malls? In Providence, Rhode Island, the country’s oldest such retail venue has become inexpensive micro-apartments. Westchester’s county planning commission is looking at schools and other buildings for adaptive reuse.

And houses or apartments need not be tiny to be affordable. Mary Tingerthal, a former commissioner of Minnesota’s Housing Finance Agency, points to modular building methods that substantially decrease construction costs. She’s working with nonprofit, government and private groups to gain traction.

Government policy can also mandate that new complexes or apartment buildings contain a certain percentage of affordable rental or for purchase homes. In May of 2019, White Plains adopted an ordinance doing just that.

Even without a mandate, some developers are hopping on board, and pricing units within reach. Chappaqua-based Wilder-Balter Partners’ portfolio boasts affordable housing projects throughout Westchester. It is currently developing a much-needed affordable housing project in Peekskill, one of the areas in the county where the mismatch between incomes and housing costs is the greatest.

We see the urgent need - and also the satisfaction that comes with each story of success. While lack of money is a fundamental issue, there are multiple causes of homelessness - and as a multi-pronged, anti-poverty organization, we’re working to address any other underlying problems or needs.

We have had many move-outs from our Northern Westchester shelter, the Jan Peek House, this fall. That’s happened because our staff has worked diligently to help those we gave shelter find suitable and affordable alternatives. Two veterans were among our rehoused; so was a woman and her family fleeing domestic violence. Finally, a young person with nowhere to go is now sharing an apartment and receiving social support.

There are challenges to increasing the number of affordable housing units, according to Pattern for Progress. Among them are development costs, insufficient infrastructure in local municipalities and the all-too common and misinformed negative perceptions about affordable housing, and those housed. But it’s essential.

As 2020 begins, we have purpose, commitment and hope. Our wish for the new year, and decade, is that soon homelessness will be a distant memory, and economic stress from ballooning housing costs will be a thing of the past.

Cynthia Knox, CEO
Caring for the Hungry and Homeless of Peekskill