Make Room director: More affordable housing could stimulate economy

Wichita native Angela Boyd wants people to know that finding affordable housing isn’t just an issue in San Francisco or Manhattan.

A 1999 East High School graduate, Boyd works for Make Room, a national nonprofit launched by Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing advocacy organization.

Along with a stint as a journalist, Boyd said she has spent most of her time since leaving Wichita working “on policy and politics” in Washington, D.C.

Boyd, who was back in Wichita this week, talked with The Eagle’s Bryan Horwath about Make Room and why she thinks that rental housing reform could help not only low- and middle-income Americans, but also businesses.

For more information about Make Room, which is funded privately by organizations like the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, visit makeroomusa.org.

Q: Tell me about Make Room.

A: I started working for Enterprise Community Partners after college. This spring, we launched Make Room, and I became the managing director. We were looking at what it means to be a renter in America today. Enterprise has been around for about 35 years, and it felt like, despite our best efforts, things have been getting worse, not better. We felt like we would have to do something different to get people’s attention.

It seems like the advocates for the homeless and the home ownership lobby have both been doing a great job, but it really felt like there are all these people in the middle. We started looking at the trends and it became clear that one in four renter households are spending more than half their income on housing. That’s just crazy and unsustainable.

Q: What’s the solution?

A: Part of it is helping people to understand that we have a rental housing problem in the U.S. and that it’s not just in big metro areas. It’s in middle America, too.

In Kansas, one in five families who rent are paying more than half their income in rent, even though the perception is that it’s very affordable to live here. People are renting in America more than ever before, yet we have 11 million families that can barely afford rent. Make Room exists for those 11 million families.

Part of the problem is that there’s not enough homes that are affordable, particularly for seniors and others on fixed incomes, and for young people just starting, who may be saddled with student loan debt. There are also so many working families whose wages just aren’t cutting it. When you’re making minimum wage, or even $10 or $12 per hour, you can’t afford rent in a lot of places in this country.

Q: A staunch believer in free market principles might say that the laws of supply and demand will dictate the ebb and flow of the rental housing market. What would you say to someone who might make that argument?

A: I would say that the market is never going to meet the needs of all people. One of the perceptions that we run into is this idea that the market is this amorphous thing that can’t be regulated or directed in any way. I would say that the market is simply the result of policy choices that we’ve made and investments that we’ve made as a country.

People that develop affordable housing make a lot of money. If you look at how much land costs and how much it costs to operate a building, your deal probably isn’t going to pencil unless there is some sort of public investment into it. It’s about creating opportunities for people. Part of that is creating savings in other parts of the overall economy.

Q: Let’s talk about that. You say that part of your advocacy work has to do with reaching out to the business community to convince those folks that this is an issue they should care about. Why should they care, and how could businesses benefit from more affordable housing options in the U.S.?

A: According to our economist, if you took the 11 million American families spending more than half their income on rent and brought that down to just half — which we think is still too much — that would free up $60 billion per year in purchasing power. Now, families might save some of that, but they also might put some back into the economy.

That’s why we’re hoping that retailers and corporations might become more interested in this issue. It’s certainly something that would be good for their bottom line. Right now, we don’t think they’re really very interested or aware.

Q: For many years, home ownership was a main goal for families and one of the best ways for Americans to build wealth. As you point out, that idea seems to have been changing, in part because of the housing crisis that led us into the economic downturn a few years ago. How has the idea of home ownership changed?

A: Home ownership is still the goal for a lot of people, which is great. Personally, I don’t care how people become affordably housed, I just want them to have a stable place to live. …

A lot of people lately have been re-thinking the idea of home ownership in the wake of what happened in the foreclosure crisis. The reality is that a lot of people shouldn’t be homeowners right now. Part of our problem is that, while home ownership is good for the economy, many people pay so much of their income in rent, they can’t save for a down payment. The pipeline to home ownership has been terribly damaged, and what we’ve found out is that no-down-payment mortgages are not the answer.

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 4:25 PM with the headline "Make Room director: More affordable housing could stimulate economy."