Stock photo.
(The following Letter to the Editor was submitted by Mike Hays, of the Montco 30% Project, and Bill England, of Here for Us. The opinions expressed within are their own.)
To the Editor:
Somewhere in Montgomery County, at this moment, a family with school age children is facing a power shutoff due to non-payment. The household’s perishable groceries may need to be thrown out in the garbage, while the students’ laundry will have to wait another week.
Somewhere else in Montgomery County, right now, a child is watching their parent(s) go through the early stages of eviction. I know this because I spoke to a single father recently, who called a legislative office in sheer desperation. Imagine for a moment this level of trauma to a child’s psyche at the start of a new school year.
Statewide, Pennsylvanians experienced 9,978 evictions over the past month, according to the Eviction Lab of Princeton University. We rank first among the 10 states tracked.
A lack of housing that people can afford – combined with the end of pandemic-era government assistance programs – have been a dangerous one-two punch that have landed many families on the brink of total disaster. Homelessness among students is tracked by the government. Here in Montgomery County, the percentage of the student population ranges from 0.20% to 4%, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
I am urging our elected leaders to take two steps to help hold back this breached levee of human suffering.
First, restore dedicated funding at the county level for emergency rent and utility assistance. How? Apply for federal and state grants. Raise our taxes. Do whatever is necessary to keep people from being evicted. After all, it is much more efficient to address homelessness when we are not routinely adding to the problem by tossing families on the street.
Secondly, municipal elected officials should follow the laudable leadership of the Upper Gwynedd Board of Commissioners by taking initial steps to build more housing that people can afford. Last month, the board approved necessary zoning changes to permit a 60-unit Walters Group development to advance to land development review. Under the plan, 56 of the one-to-three-bedroom units would be rented to households with incomes ranging between $44,000 and $66,000.
While we are at it, township and borough leaders need to dismantle and reform exclusionary zoning in their municipalities that currently makes it very difficult to build multi-family housing. This is vital to equal opportunity for low- and moderate-income families to have access to high-achieving, well-staffed school districts. Out of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, researchers found that only 5% of Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) holders live in high-opportunity neighborhoods, according to a 2019 study from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. This discrimination and opportunity hoarding is immoral.
Housing deserves to be a top priority for the General Assembly and county commissioners because efforts to fully and fairly fund our schools will fall short if students and their families still face housing insecurity. We should prioritize this essential of life with our budgets and tax dollars.
Signed,
Mike Hays
Co-director, Montco 30% Project
Bill England, MSW
Here for Us
