Affordable workforce housing thrives in select U.S. cities
WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES — Several U.S. cities are making headway on the affordable housing crisis plaguing much of the nation, offering solutions as rents and home prices outpace incomes.
The Midwest currently leads for affordable workforce housing given lower costs of living and home prices, according to Tess Fay, a principal at site consulting firm Global Location Strategies in South Carolina.
Using data from the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, Fay’s firm ranks the following most affordable U.S. housing markets for employees:
- Danville, Illinois
- Decatur, Illinois
- Johnstown, Pennsylvania
- Kokomo, Indiana
- Weirton-Steubenville in West Virginia and Ohio
Meanwhile, Empower.com’s own study of affordable areas for working adults lists Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Springfield, Illinois; and Wichita, Kansas as the top three locales using criteria such as living costs, healthcare and home pricing.
In Richmond, Virginia, housing shortage equals 39,000 rental units, but efforts are underway to mitigate the crisis. Jovan Burton, head of the nonprofit Partnership for Housing Affordability, notes the area’s average monthly rent now exceeds $1,400, unaffordable to most working families.
“In reality, the majority of our workforce cannot afford the median rent here. These are hundreds of thousands of individuals. These are child-care workers, people in the restaurant and service industry, admin workers, government workers and call center workers too,” Burton said.
The city has recently announced a $100 million fund for affordable housing, in partnership with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), to help alleviate the crisis.
This “lock-in effect” situation, exacerbated by the highest mortgage interest rates in nearly 25 years and a significant shortage of new homes, has led to a nationwide deficit of 5.5 million to 7 million housing units.
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The housing crisis has site selection experts now evaluating housing costs and availability when scouting locations for new corporate facilities needing to hire many workers.
“It is absolutely an issue that we consider in our projects,” says Fay.
Her firm analyzes median home pricing, home-to-price income ratios, rental vacancy rates and drives through potential neighborhoods when helping companies find optimal locales for plants and offices.
