This project is important:
“Today, most poor renting families spend at least half of their income on housing costs, with one in four of those families spending over 70 percent of their income just on rent and utilities. Incomes for Americans of modest means have flatlined while housing costs have soared. Only one in four families who qualifies for affordable housing programs gets any kind of help. Under those conditions, it has become harder for low-income families to keep up with rent and utility costs, and a growing number are living one misstep or emergency away from eviction.”
So I was in a situation of near-homelessness where my family had to come help. It was, however, a situation for which I was responsible.
When I was growing up, my family lived in HUD housing. I truly believed that most of the people there could have paid their own way, while some were not at fault. My family made it out of there miraculously–or rather through my mother’s determination to not stay on the dole. One-by-one we left that town and all became college and graduate school grads.
But I do have to keep aware that some people just cannot get out of a situation where they cannot afford the rent. The homeless many times are subject to things beyond their control, like mental illness and related substance control–but not all of them. I think the Eviction Lab’s point about the need for a “living wage” is important.
It’s just the mandating of that wage and denying the rights of landlords that are forgotten here. I have looked through the site (Google search “site:evictionlab.com landlord”) for any mention of help for landlords and business owners. I would like to see more on helping business owners pay their employees that wage and the landlords receiving the rent they need.