San Benito County residents must earn $16.62 per hour to afford
a two-bedroom housing unit, according to the National Low Income
Housing Coalition.
The dollar amount, known as the Housing Wage, is the amount a
person working full-time has to earn to afford the fair-market rent
while paying no more than 30 percent of income in rent, according
to the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH).
”
The housing situation for people with low incomes in San Benito
County is even worse than it was last year,
”
said CCRH Executive Director Rob Wiener.
”
People just don’t earn enough to be able to afford even modest
rental housing.
”
San Benito County residents must earn $16.62 per hour to afford a two-bedroom housing unit, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The dollar amount, known as the Housing Wage, is the amount a person working full-time has to earn to afford the fair-market rent while paying no more than 30 percent of income in rent, according to the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH).
“The housing situation for people with low incomes in San Benito County is even worse than it was last year,” said CCRH Executive Director Rob Wiener. “People just don’t earn enough to be able to afford even modest rental housing.”
Because San Benito County is a “bedroom community” to the Bay Area, many people who work there, but can’t afford to live there, have migrated to San Benito County. This migration has caused housing prices to skyrocket.
The seduction lies in the county’s proximity to the coast, the good weather and the overall desirability as a nice place to live, Wiener said.
This has caused low-wage earners in the county to not be able to afford decent housing. An estimated 43 percent of county residents cannot afford the Housing Wage for a two-bedroom unit, he said.
San Benito County is one of the top 10 counties in the state for population growth, and has clearly become a commuter sub-division of the Bay Area, with people acquiescing to a one- to two-hour commute to the city for work, Wiener said.
“People are willing to pay top dollar to live close to the Bay,” he said.
The 2000 census reported that 48.5 percent of the working age population leaves the county to work. That means between 10,000 and 12,000 county residents awake to the promise of a wearisome commute to work and back every day.
With the increase in commuters moving out of the city and into San Benito County, unless the county becomes proactive in identifying land and working with developers to provide more affordable housing for residents, children currently growing up here will not be able to afford to live here in the future, Wiener said.
“It will lead to overcrowding and bad housing that people will be overpaying for,” he said, “and the continuation of long commutes.”
This will also lead to increased pollution, more traffic congestion and working parents not being able to spend time at home with their families, he said.
“Obviously it makes sense for people to try to find something in San Benito County, but when they can’t they’ll move farther and farther out,” he said.
The increase of higher income families moving into the county, capable of affording the higher price of living, motivated developers to build large homes on large lots because they could sell them, said San Benito County Planning Director Rob Mendiola.
This means less and less building is going into apartments and smaller size dwellings with more affordable rates, he said. The balance between what average wage earners in the county can afford and what is available has become severely disrupted.
“The housing market became very unbalanced and it didn’t happen overnight, and in time we can begin to balance it. But the community has to commit to do that,” he said. “I think there is more of a commitment today than there has been in the past.”
Housing is especially at a disadvantage because of the rampant growth the county has experienced in the past decade and the number of issues that arose because of a lack of foresight to make sure these collisions didn’t occur, Mendiola said.
One of the issues the City of Hollister is still dealing with is the sewer treatment problem, said Director of Community Development Bill Card. The moratorium placed on the city prohibits any residential or commercial building to take place until it is lifted in October 2005.
“Because no new housing is coming on line, it also affects the prices upwardly,” Card said.
All these factors contributing to increased housing prices can only be counteracted by getting a good job. However, high paying jobs are few and far between in the county.
“Unfortunately what happens is that local people end up going to another community to buy a house,” Card said. “It’s an economic phenomenon that’s just another one of the effects of the cost of living in this area.”
