By Michael Grunwald
Sunday, August 27, 2006; B01 The Washington Post

In the past five years, housing prices in Fairfax County have grown 12 times as fast as household incomes. Today, the county's median family would have to spend 54 percent of its income to afford the county's median home; in 2000, the figure was 26 percent. The situation is so dire that Fairfax recently began offering housing subsidies to families earning $90,000 a year; soon, that figure may go as high as $110,000 a year.

Seventy years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the Depression had left one-third of the American people "ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-nourished," Americans are well-clothed and increasingly overnourished. But the scarcity of affordable housing is a deepening national crisis, and not just for inner-city families on welfare. The problem has climbed the income ladder and moved to the suburbs, where service workers cram their families into overcrowded apartments, college graduates have to crash with their parents, and firefighters, police officers and teachers can't afford to live in the communities they serve.

Homeownership is near an all-time high, but the gap is growing between the Owns and the Own-Nots -- as well as the Owns and the Own-80-Miles-From-Works. One-third of Americans now spend at least

30 percent of their income on housing, the federal definition of an "unaffordable" burden, and half the working poor spend at least 50 percent of their income on rent, a "critical" burden. The real estate boom of the past decade has produced windfalls for Americans who owned before it began, but affordable housing is now a serious problem for more low- and moderate-income Americans than taxes, Social Security or gas prices.

Yet nobody in national politics is doing anything about it -- or even talking about it.

For most of the past 70 years, housing was a bipartisan issue. In recent decades, its association with urban poverty made it more of a Democratic issue. But now it is simply a nonissue. The current crunch falls hardest on renters in Democratic-leaning cities and metropolitan areas, but Democrats have ignored the issue as resolutely as Republicans. Neither Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) nor President Bush even bothered to propose affordable housing plans during the 2004 presidential campaign.

"Even 10 years ago, that would have been unimaginable," says Ron Utt of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "But now the problems are so much worse, and nobody cares. . . . I find myself on panels where I'm the token conservative, and I'm the one asking: Doesn't anyone care about affordable housing?"

America used to care a lot about affordable housing. Roosevelt signed housing legislation in 1934 and 1937, providing mortgages, government apartments and construction jobs for workers down on their luck. In 1949, Congress set an official goal of "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family," and in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon began offering subsidized rent vouchers to millions of low-income tenants in private housing. For half a century, most housing debates in Washington revolved around how much to expand federal assistance.

But for the past two decades, the public face of public housing has been decrepit projects such as Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green. And the only new federal housing initiative has been HOPE VI, a Clinton administration program that has demolished 80,000 units of the worst public housing and built mixed-income developments in their place. The program has eliminated most of the high-rise hellholes that gave public housing a bad name, including Robert Taylor and Cabrini-Green, and has revived some urban neighborhoods. But it has razed more subsidized apartments than it has replaced.

Overall, the number of households receiving federal aid has flatlined since the early 1990s, despite an expanding population and a ballooning budget. Congress has rejected most of President Bush's proposed cuts, but there has been virtually no discussion of increases; affordable-housing advocates spend most of their time fighting to preserve the status quo.

And it's a tough status quo. Today, for every one of the 4.5 million low-income families that receive federal housing assistance, there are three eligible families without it. Fairfax County has 12,000 families on a waiting list for 4,000 assisted apartments. "It's golden when you get one -- nobody wants to give it up," says Conrad Egan, chairman of the Fairfax housing authority. It sounds odd, but the victims of today's housing crisis are not people living in "the projects," but people who aren't even that lucky.

Some liberals dream of extending subsidies to all eligible low-income families, but that $100 billion-a-year solution was unrealistic even before the budget deficit ballooned again. So even some housing advocates now support time limits on most federal rent aid. The time limits included in welfare reform 10 years ago were controversial, but studies suggest they've helped motivate recipients to get off the dole. And unlike welfare, housing aid is not a federal entitlement, so taking it away from one family after a few years would provide a break for an equally deserving family.

"It's a no-brainer," says David Smith, an affordable-housing advocate in Boston. "You can't sustain the internal contradiction of no limits."

Smith and many local housing officials also think that the strict income limits for most federal housing aid serve as employment disincentives, while concentrating poor children in projects without working role models. Rents are usually set at 30 percent of income, so the lowest-income families pay virtually nothing, and as Smith points out, "it's economic suicide for them to get a job." But the vast gap between the number of low-income families eligible for subsidies and the number served suggests that tinkering with the current system would not come close to solving the crisis. And the problems extend well beyond low-income families, which is why communities such as Fairfax now assist middle-class renters.

The root of the problem is the striking mismatch between the demand for and the supply of affordable housing -- or, more accurately, affordable housing near jobs. Fifteen million families now spend at least half their income on housing, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies; many skimp on health care, child care and food to do so. Others reduce their rents by overcrowding, which studies link to higher crime rates, poorer academic performance and poorer health; Los Angeles alone has 620,000 homes with more than one person per room.

Other workers are enduring increasingly long commutes from less expensive communities, a phenomenon known as "driving to qualify." In the past five years, 88,000 Fairfax County families have moved elsewhere in the region, according to a George Mason University study; when Fairfax housing officials gave me a tour recently, they told me many of their employees now drive a full hour from Warrenton in Fauquier County. The media officer interjected that she drives nearly two hours each way from Winchester in Frederick County. The driver said he lives in Winchester, too.

This creates all kinds of lousy outcomes -- children who don't get to see their parents, workers who can't make ends meet when gas prices soar, exurban sprawl, roads clogged with long-distance commuters emitting greenhouse gases. "I don't think we're creating strong communities by forcing people into their cars four hours a day," says Cathy Hudgins, chairwoman of the housing committee for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Affordable housing also helps make communities competitive; it's not clear how Fairfax can keep creating jobs if workers can't afford to live there.

Moderate-income families aren't able to buy Lamborghinis or Armani, but they can buy cars and clothes. So while it's obvious why they can't afford McMansions, it's not so obvious why they can't afford decent housing. They demand it. Shouldn't the market supply it?

The answer is yes. But in many communities, local regulations have stifled multifamily housing and even modest single-family housing. Minimum lot requirements, minimum parking requirements, density restrictions and other controls go well beyond the traditional mission of the building code and end up artificially reducing the development of safe, affordable housing.

The unfashionable but accurate term for these restrictions is "snob zoning." Suburbanites use them to boost property values by keeping out riffraff -- even the riffraff who teach their kids, police their streets and extinguish their fires. Urbanites are susceptible to the same NIMBY impulses, often couched as opposition to "traffic congestion" or "overdevelopment" or protection of the neighborhood's "character." It's easy to support affordable housing in someone else's neighborhood. But when developers propose high-density projects, neighborhoods object.

Fairfax recently bucked that trend when it approved a developer's proposal to tear down 65 single-family houses across the street from the Vienna Metro station and replace them with 2,248 high-rise apartments. The project will increase the supply of job-accessible housing and take commuters out of their cars; the county is even forcing the developer to set aside a small percentage of moderate-income units in exchange for an exemption from its anti-density rules. But the Fairfax supervisors rejected a similar mega-project down the street, bowing to opponents worried about traffic congestion, property values and "the element" the high-rises might attract.

Still, Fairfax County illustrates how the creative solutions to the current crisis are emerging locally. It was one of 130 communities to adopt "inclusionary zoning," requiring developers to reserve a percentage of affordable units. It is one of more than 300 communities with affordable-housing trust funds; Fairfax voters approved a "Penny for Housing" initiative that will divert one cent of property taxes to subsidized projects. The Fairfax housing authority is also at the cutting edge of "workforce housing," offering 20 single-room apartments for day laborers in its own offices, while building and buying several dozen townhouses to rent to nurses, police officers, firefighters, teachers and bus drivers.

But these local projects address only a tiny fraction of the demand. For example, Los Angeles is considering a bond issue that would create 1,000 units of affordable housing -- small comfort to those 620,000 families in overcrowded apartments. Economist Christopher Thornberg notes that California's private market added 120,000 urban rental units in 1987; in the first half of 2006, the total was just 232. The main obstacle, Thornberg concludes, is "the intransigence of local zoning boards."

In other words, the best thing local officials can do to promote affordable housing is to get out of the way -- stop requiring one-acre lots and two-car garages, and stop blocking low-income and high-density projects.

Washington politicians, on the other hand, have the federal budget at their disposal. But Congress hasn't supported new construction since the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit of 1986, which creates nearly 100,000 units of affordable housing a year, enough to replace half the units that are torn down or converted to market rents. Bush proposed a home-ownership tax credit during his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, but it turned out to be the rare tax cut he didn't pursue. A bill pending in Congress would divert a percentage of profits from federally chartered institutions such as Fannie Mae to a national affordable-housing trust fund, but it seems stalled. The only affordability ideas with any traction at the national level are not really housing ideas; for example, one way to make housing more affordable to workers would be to raise their incomes -- through higher minimum wages, lower payroll taxes or an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.

There is one clear solution to the affordable-housing crisis: a real estate crash. It's the one housing issue that attracts media attention -- because it would hurt the Owns. But while an easing of prices could be devastating for lower-income Owns with risky mortgages, it probably wouldn't bring home ownership within reach for many Own-Nots. Prices have too far to fall; in 2000, two-thirds of the home sales in Fairfax were for $250,000 or less, but last year, fewer than one-twentieth were. And even a modest price slump could trigger a construction slowdown that would make shortages of affordable housing for moderate-income families even worse.

Eventually, politicians may rediscover housing -- not as an urban poverty issue, but as a middle-class quality-of-life issue, like gas prices or health care. Homeownership is often described as the American dream, but these days many workers would settle for a decent rental that won't bankrupt their families.

In Tony Monterey County, Slums and a Land War

SALINAS, Calif. -- Monterey County is marked by dramatic craggy cliffs that drop to the Pacific Ocean. Along the coast sit the manicured, affluent enclaves of Carmel, Pebble Beach and Monterey, which attract wealthy homeowners and tourists from around the world.

About 20 miles inland, in the same county, is the fertile valley of Salinas, America's vegetable garden. Some 80% of the nation's lettuce and much of its broccoli, cauliflower and spinach grow in Salinas's fog-cooled fields, which produce $3.5 billion worth of crops annually. "We have the climate and soils that make us one of the most bountiful areas in the world," says Bob Roach, the county's assistant agricultural commissioner.

The five-member family of Gabriela Alvarado, for example, has shared a tiny two-bedroom rented house with two fieldworkers. "It's the only way we can afford to live here," says Mrs. Alvarado, whose husband came to Salinas 18 years ago to work in the lettuce fields. The Alvarados charged two fieldworkers $150 a month each to board with them.

In a study of agriculture workers published in December, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley reported that 39% of homes in the Salinas area had more than 1.5 people per room, compared with 0.5% of all U.S. homes.

Monterey County is torn by competing priorities. On one side are farmers, developers and immigrant advocates, who want to see more housing built. On the other are environmentalists and residents, including those in the upscale coastal towns, who want to preserve open space and their quality of life. As the two camps fail to reach a middle ground, low-income immigrants have borne most of the fallout: limited housing, with sky-high prices.

The stalemate has helped create housing prices in Salinas, a city of 150,000, that are out of sight, even by California standards. Last year, Salinas was the least-affordable place in the country to live, based on the percentage of median income required to make the mortgage on a median-priced house, according to Moody's Economy.com. The median resale price of a single-family home in Salinas was $620,000 in June 2006, compared with $175,750 the same month in 1996, according to DataQuick Information Systems. City manager Dave Mora says that Salinas's 19 square miles are "99% built out."

Monterey County's unusual combination of prime agricultural land and stunning coastal property, of great wealth abutting great poverty, make it an extreme example of how land-use questions can turn political. The clash here provides a glimpse of what may be faced by other areas and industries that increasingly rely on low-wage immigrant laborers, without enough places to house them.

The fight is also emblematic of "slow-growth" movements across the country. From California to Vermont, residents are rebelling against plans they worry will trigger sprawl, rejecting the notion that what's good for the economy is good for them. Many want to maintain the small-town character of their communities, or preserve historic sites or the environment.

Some of the agriculture workers in Monterey are undocumented immigrants, and many move with the harvests, traveling from Arizona to California to the Northwest. But increasingly, there is work year-round in Salinas. Technology has allowed more crop rotations throughout the year, fresh-vegetable processing plants have opened and wineries have sprung up.

In the 1950s and 1960s, farmers brought thousands of Mexican laborers to the U.S. as part of the government's bracero program. Farmers housed the mostly male workforce in dormitories on the edge of their land. By the 1970s, few farm owners offered housing because in most cases, they weren't obligated by law to provide it.

As the agricultural industry in Salinas flourished, the number of immigrants surged. At the same time, the area's beauty was becoming a draw to the wealthy and to tourists. Environmental groups increasingly kept a watchful eye over Monterey's land and its marine life.

The pristine look of the area is key to the county's $1.6 billion tourism industry. In Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor, neon signs, billboards and food stands are banned. A round of golf at the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links is $450 per person.

In the 1980s, more developers started to arrive. Grassroots groups began forming to oppose new housing projects, citing concerns about sprawl, water supplies and road congestion. In the 1990s, the groups began filing lawsuits, which stalled several developments. Still, amid the dot-com boom, Silicon Valley workers began buying homes in the area, even though it meant a long commute. "The mantra of big-money interests is 'we need affordable housing,' "says Jan Mitchell, who formed two groups to fight developers. "But they never provide affordable housing; they will build estates."

Janice O'Brien, a LandWatch supporter, lives in a fan-shell-shaped house in Pebble Beach, designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Her solar-powered home sits atop dunes on a well-known scenic route. Mrs. O'Brien moved here in 1973 from southern California, when many people, especially from Los Angeles, began to seek greener, calmer pastures in the Central Coast. She describes herself as a "liberal Democrat and ardent environmentalist."

"Why don't we live within the resources that make the peninsula beautiful?" she says. "That is our battle cry. Stay within the resources."

Mrs. O'Brien says that because of the influx of people working in the tourist trade in her area, traffic "has begun to look like Los Angeles at 5 p.m.," when many workers drive home.

Critics say that slow-growth advocates often live in coastal towns or ranch areas, surrounded by nature and isolated from the problems of overcrowding. "There are people who came here 20 years ago, found Utopia and don't want anything to change," says Jerry Smith, chairman of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and a fourth-generation native of Monterey. "I'm passionate about my ocean sanctuary, rolling hills and farmland, but I really believe we need to build housing."

Other longtime residents, most of whom have seen their property values rise, want to fend off developers who they fear will suburbanize the area. "Nobody wants to give up this way of life," says Carol Harrington, who has lived in the Salinas area since her youth. Wild turkeys, wild pigs and deer roam on her 16 acres. She thinks housing for immigrant workers "should be provided by the farmers."

In 1999, another nonprofit group, called Common Ground, was formed to oppose LandWatch; its supporters included agriculture interests, the tourism industry and immigrant advocates.

Farmers in Salinas say they have been stewards of the land long before environmentalists arrived, and should have the flexibility to develop it as they see fit. "The threat to agriculture is not that we'll sell land," says Rod Braga, whose grandfather started farming here 80 years ago and who employs about 1,200 immigrants during peak season. "It's that our laborers won't be able to afford to live here."

While environmentalists and farmers battled and little new housing was built, immigrants suffered, with more and more workers living in difficult conditions.

For several years, the Alvarados shared a rented two-bedroom apartment with another family. "It is impossible to make ends meet on one salary" in Salinas, says Mrs. Alvarado, who worked at a local preschool part-time. Her husband earned $10.50 an hour. She earned $7.50 an hour. She says she would have preferred to stay at home, to shield her kids from gangs.

Crowded conditions contribute to the proliferation of gangs in Salinas, says Police Chief Dan Ortega. "Migrant kids are lured into gangs for protection," he says. In 2004, the most recent year for which national comparisons are available, the murder rate in Salinas was 11.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 5.5 nationally. Aggravated assaults in Salinas were 453 per 100,000, compared with 291 nationally. Robberies were 302 per 100,000, against 136.7 nationally. The city's homicide rate fell last year, Mr. Ortega says, in part because of the creation of a countywide Gang Task Force.

He notes the contrast for immigrants who serve the tourist trade in the upscale communities. "To make all that tourism work, you need busboys, maids and cooks," says Mr. Ortega. "After work, they come home to Salinas" where living conditions are deplorable, he says.

The housing crush has caused workers to make risky plays for the few ownership opportunities that come up. In March, real-estate agent Frank Bellafiore says he sold a house to a Mexican immigrant field-worker who had been renting a room for his family for seven years in another family's home. The home -- a 1,013-square-foot house built in 1954 -- cost $490,000. The monthly mortgage payment of $3,000 represented about 70% of the fieldworker's income.

Despite that, "he was so thrilled that he cried when he signed the loan," recalls Mr. Bellafiore, who declined to give his client's name. He says the new homeowner is considering becoming a landlord himself, by renting out one of his bedrooms to a pair of field-workers.

The housing crunch is even driving higher-income workers away, employers say. Don Nucci, co-chairman of Mann Packing Co., a vegetable packer and shipper, says his company recently lost five supervisors, discouraged by the area's home prices and gang problems. John D'Arrigo, whose grandfather started farming here in 1923, says his agribusiness lost two high-tech experts in three months. "It's happening all over town," he says. "People are leaving this area, from low-skilled workers all the way up to people making $100,000 a year."

If more land is allowed to be developed for housing, the big question is whether that would help the immigrant population. The pro-growth camp says it will, because every new project is required to include a certain number of "workforce" housing units, which are intended for lower- to moderate-income workers.

The slow-growth camp contends most development will be for expensive homes -- and even the units designated for lower-income workers will be out of reach for most immigrant laborers, who earn as little as $14,000 a year.

Construction of 853 houses -- in the only single-family development now going up in Salinas -- was delayed three years by challenges from another slow-growth group called Citizens for Responsible Growth, which raised concerns about the impact on traffic, schools and open space. Most of those houses cost between $500,000 and $800,00. Under current city rules, 12% must be set aside for moderate- to low-income families; those houses cost more than $200,000.

"Families will do whatever they can to get into a house," says Mr. Mora, the Salinas city manager. "You need to have two or three families in a house." Some low-income home buyers take out interest-only mortgages, or benefit from special financing from nonprofit or government groups.

The latest battle over competing visions for Monterey County is evident in the struggle to revise a 20-year growth plan. The plan has been a work-in-progress for six years and has already cost taxpayers more than $6 million.

The first draft of the plan satisfied the slow-growth camp, but infuriated farmers, housing advocates and the tourism industry. Development of 75% of county land was blocked, either because it was deemed ecologically sensitive or too far from infrastructure. Latino community leaders accused slow-growth groups of being "environmental racists," who wanted to deprive Hispanics of achieving home ownership.

Last October, LandWatch, the slow-growth group, unveiled its own plan. Under that plan, many decisions -- including approval for certain housing projects -- would be decided by voters rather than elected or appointed officials. Development would be restricted to five already-urbanized areas. The plan calls for new projects to set aside at least 30% of units for low-income families.

Immigrant advocates say the LandWatch initiative would allow the heavily white populations of Carmel, Pebble Beach and Monterey, which often have higher voter turnout, to veto growth plans in Salinas Valley communities, which are home to mainly working-class Hispanics.

"Their plan basically says [to immigrants] that you can work in our restaurants, hotels and golf courses," says Alfred Diaz-Infante, president of a nonprofit home developer called Chispa. "But go home to your crowded conditions in Salinas at the end of the day."

LandWatch hoped to put its plan on the ballot in November, but the plan is tied up in San Francisco federal court. The court will decide whether a petition to qualify an initiative for the ballot complies with the Voting Rights Act if it was circulated only in English despite the fact that the area has many Spanish speakers.

Monterey County is advancing with its fourth draft of the general plan, which it hopes to adopt within months.

Meanwhile, the Alvarados, who came to Salinas in 1989 to pick lettuce, have had enough. They recently moved to Pasco, Wash., where they hope to seek work in the fields and be able to buy a home. "It got too expensive in Salinas," Mrs. Alvarado says.

Return to http://pelicancounty.com
*****************************************
Before the above happens to Collier County we have an answer -- rental housing over covered parking.