Did Someone Say Affordable Housing?

Words have power… and no other word in this current environment has quite as much power as the word affordable. If you want to start a culture war, couple affordable with housing and use the two in a sentence together, and the imagery that is typically visualized are people, particularly people of color, living in subsidized housing. This image usually coalesces people both black and white to line up to voice their opposition about what it will do to their community, when in fact affordable housing means nothing more than safe, decent, and affordable. Furthermore, affordable, by definition as a standalone, means nothing more than not having a cost that is too high.

If we were to further examine how affordability income is defined, it is commonly accepted that a home is considered affordable when a household spends no more than 30% of its income on either rent or a mortgage. Here are the numbers for practical purposes:

•  According to research provided by city sources, $50,282 is the average yearly salary for a worker in Duval County.  
• That equates to roughly $24.17 an hour, $966 per week, or $3,867 per month.  
• Therefore, a housing burden should not be more than $1,160 per month.

Obviously, these numbers fluctuate depending on where you are on the professional scale; however, Duval County has entire communities in which earning $50,000 a year makes you the exception rather than the norm. Since the pandemic, the cost of housing has been commoditized at such a rate that housing is no longer seen as an essential need but is more of a luxury item! No matter if we like it or not, “safe,” “decent,” and “affordable” are all adjectives that are associated with one’s capacity to pay. If we are not careful, the aforementioned will be replaced with affordable housing that means nothing more than a roof, walls, and a door– completely foregoing “safe” and “decent.”

Communities across the country have unconsciously stood by while increasing numbers of properties are concentrated in the hands of private investors, single-family housing supply is being squeezed, the number of single-family homes being converted to rental properties has more than tripled, monthly rental rates continue to rapidly rise, and a larger portion of the population is subject to potential eviction. This inaction has consequences in the form of teachers being homeless while teaching our most vulnerable citizens; or hospitals and nursing homes being understaffed because nurses are having to live an hour or more from work because adequate housing near hospitals is unavailable.

Our current housing crisis and the one that preceded it has shown us that if left to our own devices, institutional power, and its need to fill corporate coffers, will trump the average consumer every time. The mitigating factor we the people have is our capacity to leverage the government on our behalf. Therefore, now is the time for our elected officials to lean in and create sensible housing policies/solutions that work for we the people we the people before that brand new electric vehicle has to double as a mobile home in the parking lot of the local Walmart.  

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Gun #Everybody Got A Pistol

On Saturday, June 4^th, LISC Jacksonville and community partners from all over the country will take part in a national day of recognition called Wear Orange to recognize the victims of gun violence. While personally I don’t purport to be someone who is vested in the gun argument, what I do acknowledge is that guns kill people. No matter if the assailant is a mentally challenged person with a penchant for racist ideology or someone who has lost their cool and reacts to an offense, the outcome is still the same: someone had access to a gun, and now someone or some people are dead or seriously injured. According to research provide by the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 45,222 people met their maker due to gun violence. Another way to look at this is every day, 124 people in the United States die due to a gun. 

 

In communities that LISC serves across the country, “residents are 10 times more likely to die from gun homicides and 18 times more likely to be injured by guns,” based upon research provide by Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading voice in the area of gun safety advocacy. To make this point even more salient, every single day, 30 African Americans will die from gun violence. As of this writing, according to data provided by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office there have been 50 murders so far in Jacksonville. What is even more shocking is that nationally, according to the latest CDC report homicide is the leading cause of death amongst young Hispanics and African Americans between the ages of 10-24. 

 

On June 4^th, LISC Jacksonville will pause and stand with other community organizations locally and across the country to Wear Orange to honor survivors of gun violence and to commemorate those whose lives ended because of gun violence. We serve with and stand alongside community partners such as Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety and those victims both living and deceased to collectively acknowledge the senselessness of gun violence. It is also to acknowledge the trauma that comes as a result of gun violence.

 

For LISC Jacksonville, June 4^th is not about the political posturing inherent in the gun discussion. It is about acknowledging this issue relative to the communities we serve, and the implications gun violence has on them. It is about affirming our position regarding the outcomes and interventions that we know work for those very same communities. Our work seeks to create systems of safety amid various forms of violence in our most vulnerable neighborhoods. 

 

We cannot and should not stand by and allow the narrative to continue that suggests if you live in certain areas of town, you are likely to die due to gun violence. Our commitment to better outcomes has to be bigger and bolder than that. Furthermore, if we are to address the current affordable housing crisis, we must be prepared to address the issue of gun violence in these same communities because they must be a part of a desirable and larger housing solution. 

That's My Truth and I AM Sticking To It

I AM 

Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen

Executive Director LISC JAcksonville