Workforce Developments

When do Americans care about the homeless?

Americans are a kind, caring people, right? If internet searches are a good measure of what people care about, then check out this chart from Google Insights:

 

There are four things you can learn from this one simple graphic:

• Every year when Thanksgiving rolls around, Americans experience a sudden upsurge of interest in the homeless
• There's a secondary bump in interest every April - tax season!
• Interest in the homeless is at its lowest during summer - until 2010 its lowest level has consistently been in August
• Overall interest in the homeless appears to have increased since the economic collapse

Where is the greatest interest in the homeless? Top five states by Google search:

1. Hawai'i
2. District of Columbia
3. Maryland
4. Massachusetts
5. Washington 

What else do you see in the statistics? What can we learn from these stats?

You can go much deeper into this data by place, time and search terms by going directly to Google Insights.

Housing the middle class

Lately I've been running across the phrase "workforce housing" more and more often. It's a term I'm not so familiar with, but it's not difficult to guess what it means. As housing prices skyrocketed in recent years during the don't-call-it-a-bubble, more and more middle income people have found themselves priced out of the market. Hard working professionals, like firefighters, nurses, librarians, professors, even government bureaucrats and nonprofit workers, suddenly find the only homes they can afford are located far from their workplaces, or just don't exist at all.

I wouldn't blame folks earn wages closer to the minimum wage if they just shrugged and said, join the club. They've known for a long time what it's like to work hard and play by the rules but still not be able to get by financially.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Albuquerque, New Mexico's Workforce Housing Public Education Project. They created a great slideshow making the case for public funding of workforce housing there. Now I've run across an article by Seattle developer Hal Ferris calling the workforce housing shortage a silent epidemic. He explains how it's bad for workers, the environment and communities.

Ferris concludes by emphasizing what can be done about it and the roles everyone has to play in making affordable workforce housing a reality: 

If we want a future in which middle-income families are an integral part of the cities in which they serve, we all can help by encouraging our city councils and county representatives to adopt the tools as well as create new mechanisms to increase the production of workforce housing. As developers, we can make smart choices and commit to integrate affordable housing into projects. And as business leaders and major employers of the critical workforce, we can support policies and practices that promote choice and opportunity for middle-income citizens who are core to the livability and vibrancy of our cities.

Image credit: US Environmental Protection Agency

Albuquerque makes the case for workforce housing

Last month Albuquerque voters approved setting aside $10 million in bond funds for the city's Workforce Housing Opportunity Act. Home prices in Albuquerque might seem low by comparison to places like L.A. and NYC, but the city ranks 128th out of 219 metro areas in terms of housing affordability.

Anybody who hasn't had their head in the sand for the past few years knows that nationally, housing prices have shot up dramatically while worker wages have been stagnant or falling. Even if you work hard and play by the rules, you might not be able to afford a home. That's bad for you, your family and the community. Research is beginning to show it's bad for your employer too.

The Albuquerque bond funds will be used to benefit people earning less than 80% of the local median income ($55,900 for a family of four), and who pay more than 30% of their income on all housing costs. What kinds of workers are these? Child care workers, home health aides, teaching assistants, janitors, call center workers, paramedics, postal workers and even some nurses and firefighters.

As part of an project to educate the public about affordable workforce housing, the Workforce Housing Public Education Project created a slideshow video and posted it to YouTube (broken out into four parts). It does a great job of explaining the issues, presenting data that shows the need for affordable housing, and even explaining how bond funds work. Here's part 1:

Click on the following links to see part 2, part 3 and part 4. And here if you can't see part 1 embedded above. For more info, check out the website Our House ABQ, which  links to all the research the video cites, legislation and more.