Note: This article was originally published in the Spirit of Jefferson on September 14, 2022.
Jefferson County is a West Virginia success story, so it seems. We are the wealthiest county in the state with all the markers that signal that standing. We have the highest per capita income, the best educated populace, the lowest unemployment, a robust housing market, a thriving tourist industry, a public university and so on.
But another less widely touted marker of our success is a social service network, one that is extensive, effective and compassionate. It might seem contradictory that we as a county spend time, money and energy to provide a social safety net when we’re so wealthy.
Why do we even need a social safety net?
Well, it turns out there are another set of markers that show our relative wealth doesn’t distribute itself evenly in our population. We have drug and alcohol addiction; people burdened by rents, utility bills, hunger and homelessness, unemployment and health problems; or all of the above.
None of these social problems are unique to Jefferson County, of course; they occur in every county of the state and all states in the United States. But in some communities these problems fester and destroy. In Jefferson County, our social safety net catches many families and individuals and eases them back into balance. Or, at least, that’s the goal.
The largest private-sector provider of social services in the county is by far Jefferson County Community Ministries, a faith-based, nonprofit organization. JCCM in its last full fiscal year served about 1,500 clients, representing some 500 families, across all of its services, according to Keith Lowry, the organization’s executive director.
But what are the factors that make maintaining a safety net necessary? Most critically these are the forces that cause people to lose their homes, including most commonly evictions and foreclosures. For instance in Jefferson County in 2021 there were 311 court filings for evictions and 20 for foreclosures. Not all of these filings result in tenants or owners losing their homes, but they’re rough indicators of the lack of security JCCM clients, especially renters, feel about their housing situation.
Lowry reported that the legal actions putting people out of their homes have their own underlying causes, which typically involve homeowners or renters not having enough money. That can happen, he says, when people spend money intended for housing elsewhere–maybe for food, medication, family emergencies or, unfortunately, even to feed an addiction.
These are the people who are considered “cost burdened” in the terminology of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. These also include the people who may not yet have lost their homes, but those who are at risk of losing their homes and being forced out into more affordable housing, assuming affordable housing is available.
In West Virginia as a whole in 2020, the Census Bureau survey found more than 42 percent of renters were designated as cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities. The survey further indicated that more than 23 percent of Mountaineers were severely cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 50 percent of their income on basic housing needs. Those numbers increased almost 12 percent from 2019.
Drilling down to the county level, the Census Bureau’s survey estimates that in Jefferson County in 2020 there were 4,095 rental units and that the median cost of rent plus utilities was $1,063 per month. That median housing cost is the highest of any county in the state. The survey goes on to estimate that 1,920 households, or roughly 48 percent of the people renting those units, are cost burdened. That’s just a little higher than the figure for West Virginia as a whole (42 percent), indicating a housing affordability problem.
Meanwhile, among our residents living in homes with mortgages, 22 percent are cost burdened, about 26 percentage points lower than those renting, according to the agency’s survey.
The solution for our renting neighbors would seem to be to get more of them into homeownership. But home prices (the median value of a home in Jefferson County is almost $262,000) are out of reach for cost-burdened people. This isn’t surprising given that if someone is cost-burdened, they won’t have money for a downpayment, nor would they likely qualify for loans. A chicken and egg problem.
That’s the downside of being a rich county. We’re increasingly unaffordable to a big segment of people who want and need to live here. It’s a common complaint of low-wage workers in expensive locations that they cannot find affordable housing. These include short-order cooks, hotel staffers, daycare workers and others who work in lower paying jobs that help keep our communities and our economy humming.
To understand the problem, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) calculates that for the year 2020 the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in West Virginia was $653, while a full-time worker earning the minimum wage made only $455 a month. You can see the discrepancy.
In 2019, Charles Town Mayor Bob Trainor put together a committee to explore homelessness and to suggest a plan to cope with it. The committee’s “Report of the Mayor’s Select Committee on Homelessness” came out in 2021 and is available on the city’s website under the tabs “Government” and “Plans and Proposals.” The report describes in broad terms the extent of the problem and proposes actions to lessen or eliminate them.
Though the report was issued by the city of Charles Town, its scope is countywide. Its recommendations are based on a model that emphasizes the cooperation of community organizations and government agencies as an expansive “community of caregivers.”
For example, the report states that Jefferson County has only three “rapid re-housing units,” a housing unit negotiated with a landlord to lower their typical rental requirements, such as first and last month rents and security deposits. Tenants may also receive housing vouchers issued by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Unfortunately the three Jefferson County units are usually full.
Since there are not enough re-housing units, most newly homeless people are temporarily placed in what is called “transitional housing,” more commonly known as shelters. Shelters, while helpful in emergencies, don’t provide a stable, permanent footing, according to Lowry. He says that emergency shelters, often in churches, may restrict people to short stays or may not be open to families or to children. This means that JCCM often enlists the services of groups outside the county. Lowry mentioned especially the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness and the Eastern Panhandle Empowerment Center, both with facilities in Martinsburg, as important partners to help find available rapid re-housing or transitional housing.
Meeting housing needs are often a first priority of many organizations advocating for the homeless, including JCCM. It is a point explicitly addressed in the Homelessness Report issued by Charles Town. For example, the report recommends that the county “increase the supply of rapid rehousing” as well as “include affordable housing in Jefferson County housing projects.”
NLIHC in its publication “Housing First” explains the approach named by the title as “guided by the belief that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues.” In the next column we’ll follow through by taking a look at the critical need cost burdened people have for food and how addressing that need works in the county. We’ll also look at how the “case management” model operates to keep clients housed and in control of their lives by addressing their needs holistically.
Similar Posts:
- None Found