 Dear Friend,
People’s continues to build at a full clip throughout our Central Coast service area. Last month we began an apartment rehabilitation project in Isla Vista, a new apartment construction project is starting soon in Pismo Beach, and a self-help builders’ homeownership project is heading toward completion in the months ahead in King City.
Though our pace has increased, so has the unrelenting advance of the affordable housing crisis. In light of statistics back in the headlines, we will need to take it to the next level to move the needle further. We define housing as being affordable when it does not exceed 30% of a households’ income. This gives a senior living on Social Security only $283 to spend. Recent reports indicate that fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment in our footprint is now at $1,522. For a full time employee earning $13 an hour, they would have to put in 90 hours of work a week to afford this.
The mathematics clearly don’t add up, so the majority of renters along the Central Coast are burdened by spending at least 50% of their income on housing. This explains why so many report being just one financial challenge, such as a car repair or a medical bill, away from losing the roof over their head. For many of our once next door neighbors, that has already happened. In a hole, impossible to climb out of on their own, those experiencing homelessness find themselves with one compounding ill after another.
People’s believes that affordable housing has become so challenging and expensive, that it will take all of us working together to make more headway. We have to all ‘Build Together’ through increased collaboration, and in our partnership with you lays our best joint hope to make significant progress.
Thank you for supporting us for over the past five decades. Now we invite you to join us in continuing this good work, take local affordable housing to a new level, and effect significant change in the next half century together!
Ken Trigueiro, CEO & President |
Boosting the Connection
Mentorship in Action
