A group of advocates are calling for Fairfax County to improve its affordable housing policy after a new report revealed how housing costs burden low-income families.
The report, “Ensuring Housing Opportunities in Fairfax,” finds that 85 percent of renters and 75 percent of owners who earn $50,000 per family per year live in unaffordable housing. The Coalition for Smarter Growth and Tenants and Workers United released the report.
The groups are calling on the county to focus its affordable housing efforts on those families earning less than $50,000 a year, or half the county’s median income. They want the Board of Supervisors to dedicate 80 percent of the money in the county’s One Penny for Affordable Housing Fund to the families, either through policy in the 2008 budget or by enacting a separate ordinance, Coalition for Smarter Growth Policy Director Cheryl Cort said.
The county created The One Penny Fund in 2005 to provide affordable housing for residents. Nearly $18 million was devoted to the fund last year. It devotes the value of 1 cent on the county’s real estate tax toward preserving affordable housing units. But only 4 percent of the units the fund preserves are affordable for families earning less than $50,000 annually, the report said.
“That’s not right, and that needs to be changed,” said the Rev. Keary Kincannon, of Rising Hope Church in Alexandria.
The advocates also hope the fund is raised to a Two Penny fund as well, Tenants and Workers United Director Edgar Rivera said.
