DENVER — Single mother Caitlin Colbert watched the rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Denver double, triple and then quadruple in 10 years, rising from $750 to $3,374 last year. I saw it with my own eyes.
Like millions of Americans, Colbert juggled expenses each month. She pays rent and swim team expenses for one of her three children. Rentals and school supplies. Rent, groceries, etc. Colbert, a social worker who helps people get by financially, often returned home to receive a notice that if she didn't pay her rent and late fees for 30 days, she would be evicted.
“I have to budget every month and it's still not enough,” she said, adding what has become her monthly catchphrase: “Well, I have at least $13 left this month.”
Millions of Americans, especially people of color, are struggling with record numbers of unaffordable rent increases, an inflationary price crisis, a lack of affordable housing, and the end of pandemic relief. They face similar tough decisions.
According to the latest data from Harvard University's Joint Housing Research Center released in January, a record 22.4 million households (half of the nation's renters) will be spending more than 30% of their income on rent by 2022. found. The number of units renting less than $600 also fell to 7.2 million in the same year, 2.1 million fewer than a decade ago.
These factors contributed to a dramatic increase in eviction filings and record numbers of homeless people.
“This is one of the worst years we've ever seen,” said Whitney Airgood-Obricki, a senior fellow at the Harvard University Center, adding that the level of cost-burdening households in 2022 will be on par with the Great Recession in 2016. It was since then, he added. In 2008, 10 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure.
After failing to take any major action on the issue over the past decade, state and federal legislatures across the country are making housing a priority in 2024, including proposals to protect evictions, enact zoning reform, enact regulatory caps, and more. We are doing our best to address this issue. Every year rents go up and tens of billions of dollars are spent building more housing.
Airgood-Oblicki said the hardest hit are renters who earn less than $30,000 and have an average of just $310 a month left after paying rent and utilities.
“So you can imagine what the trade-offs are,” she said. “Cost-burdened renters are spending less on things like food, health care, and retirement expenses.Therefore, there are significant implications for the long-term well-being of these households.”
In Denver, Colbert's bathroom roof partially caved in last year due to a leak, and her landlord delayed repairs even though her rent increased by $200 a month. It was the last straw for Colbert, who had moved away to live with family. She is trying to buy her home through Habitat for Humanity, which provides a low-interest loan.
“It's so unfortunate that you're paying so much money and you don't even know what your rent is going to be,” Colbert said. “I just think, 'This is a waste.'”
In Auburn, Massachusetts, widespread rent increases are already hurting the last bastion of affordable housing.
Residents of the American Mobile Home Park, located along a pond just off the interstate, are facing rent increases of more than 40 percent. Many tenants, primarily senior citizens and those on fixed incomes, are not signing new leases despite these increases. A group of civil rights lawyers sent a letter to the landlord, accusing it of “unreasonable rent increases” and failing to provide critical services like proper trash and snow removal.
“How are we going to pay for that?” Amy Case, 49, is trying to figure out how to balance the $345 monthly increase with the $200 it costs to pay for her medication and twice-yearly MRI scans to monitor her brain tumor. He said he was there.
“I don't know what else to cut,” said Case, an administrative assistant at a local university, who said she would only have $300 a month left for other necessities. “You'll probably have fewer groceries. You certainly can't cut back on your medications.”
Another tenant, Ann Urbanovich, 72, who works as a department store cashier, is facing a similar rent increase.
“I was expecting it to go up $100, but it was $345. I was shocked. I have to put money into my retirement savings…because times are tough,” she said.
The mobile home park's owner, Inco Communities, did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
With many families struggling to pay their bills, landlords in Colorado are increasingly turning to evictions, with more than 50,000 eviction filings filed last year, according to data from the Colorado Attorney General's Office. .
“2023 marked the high water mark for eviction filings in Colorado's recorded history,” said the Community Economic Defense Project, a collaborative that provides financial and legal assistance to rent-strapped Colorado residents. CEO Zach Newman said.
Monique Gant, a mother of two boys, packed her belongings into boxes in a Denver suburb last week after losing a long-running eviction battle and plans to move between long-term hotel rooms and an RV for the time being. was. Gant's hair has thinned from the stress hidden beneath her stoic face toward her children.
“My kids think I'm Superwoman,” Gant said. But “when I go to take a shower or put on some music, I start crying.”
She said her sons, ages 10 and 11, were already fighting at school and on the bus and weren't participating in class as much as they used to.
About 40 percent of the people facing eviction each year are children, or about 2.9 million people, according to a study co-authored by Nick Graetz of Princeton University's Eviction Research Institute. It said research shows that housing disruption and evictions have a widespread impact on children's mental health and mental health. development.
“For kids who have experienced eviction, you can see how things can really go wrong,” Graetz said.
In Congress, lawmakers are working on a bill that would expand a federal program that gives tax credits to housing developers who agree to set aside units for low-income tenants. Supporters say this could create an additional 200,000 affordable housing units. Some lawmakers are calling for more rental assistance, including a significant increase in housing subsidies.
“We need more federal involvement,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of the Harvard University Center. “Only then will this country finally be able to put a meaningful end to the housing affordability crisis that is making life so difficult for millions of people.”
At the state level, the Colorado Legislature has proposed a bill that would limit the grounds on which landlords can evict tenants. Other bills would eliminate tenant filing fees in eviction cases and repeal zoning rules that prohibit homeowners from renting out another unit on their property.
“If we don't act now, we will soon reach a spiral point of no return,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in his State of the State address last month, which focused primarily on housing issues.
Other states are feeling similar urgency.
In Washington state, a bill would require 10% of new housing near transit hubs to be affordable to low-income residents. The other prohibits landlords from increasing rent by more than 5% each year during the lease term.
In Massachusetts, a bill has been introduced that would invest more than $4 billion to build and strengthen affordable housing, in response to the state's estimates that the state will need more than 200,000 additional units by 2030. This will be the largest housing investment in state history.
But it's too late for Urbanovic to live in a mobile home in the face of rising rents.
“My biggest worry is that I don't really have a place to move to. I don't have a place to go,” she said.
___
Casey reported from Boston.
___
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
