VIRGINIA BEACH
Nearly six months after the city adopted a work force housing program to encourage the building of more moderately-priced homes and rentals, developers have yet to submit the first proposal.
Although Beach housing leaders remain confident that with a plan in place the homes will eventually come, those hopes do little to ease the anxieties of residents, such as Mary Murphy.
Because Murphy received notice that the duplexes where she and her neighbors have lived will be torn down for 18 townhouses, the widow has been desperately looking for another affordable place to rent. She has to be out by the end of the month.
Her search, mainly in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, has been challenging. The cheapest place she's found so far was a two-bedroom for $899 - nearly $325 more than what she and other tenants at the nine-unit duplex near General Booth Boulevard have been paying. The apartment rented within days, before Murphy, who works in retail, could even fill out an application.
Last week, with her eviction looming, Murphy, 68, pondered her options and the predicaments of her neighbors, mainly low-income working families.
"I don't want to live out of my car, but if I had to I would," said Murphy, who has lived at the complex for three years.
Officials from Leland Real Estate, the property managers, said residents were told of plans to raze the duplexes after the property was sold in October 2006.
Despite a sluggish housing market, some residents are still struggling to find affordable homes, a fact that doesn't surprise Beach nonprofit leaders.
"We probably get 60 phone calls a month, and we don't even advertise," said Mary Kay Horoszewski, executive director of the Virginia Beach Community Development Corp., which rents affordable homes to moderate and low-income residents. "There just aren't enough rentals and the cost of raw land is still high."
The city's new work force housing program could help. The program, which City Council members approved in August, offers incentives for the construction of homes priced from $150,000 to $250,000 and for the development of affordable rentals. The goal is to increase homeowner opportunities for those earning between $36,000 and $76,000. The program also targets renters earning about $27,000 annually.
In recent months, the overall pool of rentals across South Hampton Roads has increased, mainly because of the real estate downturn. Still, many of the properties remain far outside the price range for even some two-income families, said Andrew Friedman, the city's director of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation.
A search of an online database of affordable housing in South Hampton Roads and Isle of Wight County found no homes available for less than $600 a month in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth or Chesapeake. There were five available in Norfolk and two in Suffolk. The Planning Commission and the Regional Task Force on Homelessness created the database, which contains more than 500 listings.
The fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Virginia Beach is $994, as established by federal housing policies.
"To pay $1,000 a month rent, your income has to be about $36,000 and that's $18 an hour," Friedman said.
The high cost of housing was highlighted in Old Dominion University's annual State of the Region report last year, which found that "housing affordability in Hampton Roads has deteriorated substantially," since 2001.
The report also cited 2005 census figures, showing that half or nearly half of the region's renters spends 30 percent or more of their income on housing and utilities - above what is considered affordable according to federal housing policies.
Many of Murphy's neighbors wonder how they will have enough left over this month to place a deposit on a new apartment.
Melody Rowe is among the residents who received eviction notices on Jan. 1. She and her husband and 8-year-old daughter have lived in their two-bedroom duplex since 2003. The unemployed home health care nurse said she recently went "Dumpster diving" for scrap metal to scrounge up some extra cash.
"There is not much I can do with no money saved up," she said. "We really don't know where we will go or what we will do."
Duane Bourne, (757) 222-5150, duane.bourne@pilotonline.com
Susan E. White, (757) 222-5114, susan.white@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
System is such that this is happening all over US!
Follow what is happening in New Orleans, Houston, Miami - this tragedy continues while the rich get richer.
Karl Marx, Upton Sinclair, George Orwell, Steinbeck, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John were right!
Virginia is for lovers? Of money?
Come on down to Huntsville, AL
A lot of jobs here, good pay, and cheap housing. Win-win-win all around.
http://www.al.com/business/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/business/120013291928550.xml&coll=1
You people are clueless
Time to take a look in the mirror people. The reason why housing is so high is you made stupid deals on houses. It's simple economics - supply and demand. The supply wasn't near as high as demand. So, prices went up. You bought houses without smart contingencies like house inspections. You made offers over what asking prices were, some getting in to bidding wars. And here's the best part, you bought houses you couldn't afford with introductory interest only ARMS and now you can't afford it anymore. You knew it was going to happen, don't say it wasn't. So who gets to pick that up...you got it, the people like me who were smart enough to buy what they could afford. We'll pay in higher taxes and loan fees to bail you out along with the decreased value of our houses as yours goes on the market at reduced rates as banks try to get whatever they can. Accept responsibility for your actions. I don't feel sorry for you.
Supply and demand
Developers can build affordable housing at a profit and would be happy to do so, but with the number of lots artificially limited by the cities by keeping large areas off limits, they will naturally maximize their profits by using the limited number of lots for larger, more costly houses. They would be idiots to do otherwise.
It is the artificially limited number of lots, density restrictions and other limits imposed by the cities that are the cause of high housing costs. The cities impose these restrictions because they need high property tax assessments to support their uncontrolled spending, particularly in our wasteful, overstaffed, education system.
If you want to get the cost of housing under control, you must first get government spending under control, so high assessments will not be needed to generate the property tax needed to support it.
Greed?
You sound like a textbook Marxist, Bookwriter. Do you write books or whatever it is you do for free? You need to dust off a copy of Atlas Shrugged. There's absolutely nothing wrong with making as much money as you can and living as well as you can. If you think a house is overpriced, you can decline to buy it. If you think a real estate agent's commission is too high, you can sell your house yourself. I'm genuinely perplexed as to why it's so fashionable to villify the housing industry (and NO, I don't in any way work in the housing industry myself).
affordable housing
Greed, that's the name of the game regarding housing in this area. Greedy developers, greedy real estate agents, greeding mortgage loan agents. There is really no affordable housing here anymore. The middle class has vanished as housing prices rise up & up. The working poor have replaced the middle class.
Wake up city managers!!!!!!!!!!!! Your social workers, nurses, teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other well trained, well educated and intelligent people are suffering and LEAVING THE AREA.
All that will be left are those squeezing money from us... the housing industry.
Let them eat cake?
Rush Limbaugh would simply say "you people aren't working hard enough!"
It's conditions like this which are driving Virginians to the Democrats in the 2008 Presidential elections. Republicans need to catch up with Mike Huckabee's "populist" message if they want any shot at relevancy and hold on to middle-class voters.
ABC
Look at moving to a better area. Raleigh has better home prices, and possibly better paying jobs. It's going to be a few years before home prices fall in Hampton Roads. Just remember, keeping house prices artificially propped up is NOT the right answer! Stay out of it, gov't! Home prices have to fall substantially. There is no other good solution to the situation.
sad
I think it's pathetic that the people making decisions regarding affordable housing think "$150,000 to $250,000" is an affordable range for the poor to middle class in this area. These people are not making $36,000 to $76,000 a year... Pick up a paper and look at the job ads. People working as receptionists, bus drivers, store clerks, and even some assistant managers are making $8 an hour.
Blame it on the builders and lenders
With all those different loans out there to buy a house builders and lenders kept raising the price of homes much faster than the cost of living was going up. The cities enjoyed all these 20% property increases for the last 4 years,but did the salaries going up at the same rate? As you can see now with all default on loans and houses sitting on the market longer the bubble has burst. Most of the homes today are still over priced and cheaply built.