The American Dream of owning your own home is becoming more and more difficult for many Americans, with many families finding it difficult to even find affordable rental properties.
Many La Plata County residents – many with limited finances – are having to choose between paying high rent prices or making big monthly mortgage payments for a home costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. A handful of low-income families may qualify for financial assistance through a local organization. But for everyone else, the struggle is all too real.
Organizations such as the Regional Housing Alliance of La Plata County offer several assistance programs to help families achieve their dreams of becoming homeowners.
Pam Moore, deputy director of the Regional Housing Alliance, said the organization helped 86 families become homeowners last year.
Moore said 21 households received direct financial assistance through the RHA, while 65 other families received other services such as counseling and first-time buyer information.
Nancy Wickham is one of the alliance’s clients who received assistance last year.
Wickham moved to Durango in 2008 and had been renting a home. However, she recently decided it was time to purchase a home when her son started school at Needham Elemetary School. She wanted to lay down some roots for him, she said.
“It was very difficult to find rentals that were affordable,” she said. “I honestly got a little discouraged during the process of buying a home, because I really didn’t think there was going to be anything in my budget.”
Wickham learned about the RHA by reading the Durango Chamber of Commerce’s electronic newsletter, she said. She initially went to an RHA home ownership class advertised in the e-letter and then followed through. She qualified for the down payment assistance program and later received funding, she said.
Wickham now lives in a home in Bayfield.
“I got very lucky,” she said. “I found the perfect place within budget.”
She said she couldn’t have realized her dream without the programs offered by RHA.
She felt like the organization was on her side.
“You can ask questions, and you can count on them,” she said.
Some of the help RHA offers include fair-share programs – a program that works with builders to ensure a percentage of homes included in a subdivision are available at discounted prices – and various home buyer’s assistance programs that are based on a family’s annual income.
A family of four may qualify for RHA assistance if it earns an annual income of $78,000 or less.
Moore has noticed that millenials tend to be waiting longer before buying a home, though the office does assist a handful of young families as well as middle-aged families who are looking to purchase their first home, she said.
The organization understands the financial burden that can come with buying a home, so it counsels prospective clients about ensuring they have a steady income, a steady relationship and plan to stay in the area for a while, she said.
For those that don’t or can’t afford to buy a home, many are spending a large portion of their income on rentals.
A national housing study conducted by Harvard University found that half of renters nationwide are spending 30 percent or more of their income on rent. The ideal percentage should be less than 30 percent depending on your income.
Nationally, Americans are spending nearly 50 percent of their income on housing, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Similar statistics can be applied to La Plata County renters.
According to a La Plata County Housing Needs conducted in April 2013, 1,900 families who rent in the county with incomes under $35,000 a year pay unaffordable prices for their homes. Unaffordable means a household is spending more than 30 percent of its income for housing.
The study also found that rentals affordable to working individuals and families with incomes less than $35,000 a year have been in short supply even before the Great Recession in 2007.
The study was conducted to determine the needs of low to moderate income residents in the county.
vguthrie@durangoherald.com
