Hundreds of local Habitat for Humanity organizations are gathering in Washington D.C. for Habitat on the Hill. During the annual visit this week, the homeownership advocacy nonprofit presses legislators on issues around housing. This year, one of the group’s major themes is about the dearth of affordable starter homes and the cumulative impact that has on local communities as well as the national economy. The lack of housing in Berkshire County has left the largely rural community in a crisis amid stagnant wages and high prices. Carolyn Valli, the CEO of Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, is representing the Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based organization in Washington. She spoke with WAMC Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes from the capitol about Habitat’s goals for the summit.
VALLI: Our country needs over 800,000 units of housing in order to be able to meet the needs of current Americans. And, we also need them to look at extending out some tax programs that will make it more desirable for people to be able to build, and we also need them to understand the huge price gap between how much it costs to construct homes and how much the affordability is, and then, how big of the gap that is. And there are policies that they can create that can help offset both of those things, and we're hoping that we can really bring attention to that, especially in having them look at things that will affect first-time starter homes, because that's the gap in America right now, is that we do not have starter home prices in our communities, because right now in Massachusetts, you have to make over $160,000 to be able to buy a median income home.
WAMC: Now, a key part of this conversation is about stagnant wages and wealth disparity in America. Tell us about those conversations in Washington- What are you hearing from leaders when it comes to that foundational issue when it comes to home ownership in America?
That it's a problem that's not going to get any better until we take some proactive policies and actually look at the whole system from beginning to end- Whether it's land acquisition, whether it's new zoning requirements, and also looking [at], prior to the 1960s most family sizes were like six people. Now the average family size is 2.5, so when we have policies that require building a house on two-acre minimums, that's not a good land use at all, and it's not how people really need to live their lives anymore. When you had a lot of kids, you needed a lot of land to let them run. That's not the reality of today, and we need to start engineering for the future of tomorrow.
What have you learned from fellow Habitat groups from around the country during this trip? And have you learned anything that underscored anything unique about the Central Berkshire experience?
One of the things I'm super proud about is, we would consider ourselves a small affiliate compared to some of the other affiliates that are here- But all of us are experiencing the same problem, the gap between construction costs and the wages that people earn locally, and how do we get home ownership affordable for all? Because it used to be that that was the American dream. The American dream still exists, but we have to decide which is more important for us- That one person gets to have the American dream and then they get to own 10 other people's American dream because they just want to have rental housing, or do we want to have policies set up that will make it really affordable for all people? And affordability can be multiple levels, it's not just low and moderate income. And the other thing is, there are some solutions that are happening throughout the country with different models, different taxation revenues, that I really want to bring back and talk to our policymakers about locally, because while we're here advocating in DC, we have to do that same work locally and statewide, and that's where we can also have a huge impact. But part of it is starting the conversation, and in our case, I've been with Habitat 18 years, so we've been having this conversation for a long time, and we're really lucky in the Berkshires, because, the city of Pittsfield are our partners, the town of Great Barrington are our partners, and we because of where we live in the Berkshire, we all have to work together to try to solve the problem, and I think we do it better than most other places from what I'm seeing.
Give us a sense of the kind of conversations you’re having with legislators, and what your goals are for this week down in DC.
A lot of the work we've been doing right now is looking at, what are our asks? What do we know about legislature? What do we know that's going on across the country, so that we're not just talking about our particular needs, but we're looking at housing universally? So that's what the first two days has really been about, understanding the landscaping, learning more. They had multiple great speakers that have come and talked to us about the history of housing and all of the things that have affected the prices of where they are today, and just even that data point that I gave you about house sizes and family sizes. So, the first two days is always about making sure we all understand what's going on, not just in our own communities, but what's going on across the country. And then we do talk about what specifically are our asks. One of our asks is minimally having level funding for [Community Develop Block Grant], because we know the city of Pittsfield uses those [Community Develop Block Grant] funds in order to help real people in the Berkshires. We also want to look for them to keep [Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program] funds, which are help for infrastructure, and we also want to make sure that the AmeriCorps program is not wiped out, because that's where a lot of folks are getting workforce training and development from Habitat, is through the AmeriCorps program. So, we want to make sure that they understand, what is the face of somebody that if that funding doesn't come through, how will their lives change? And how will their lives change affect our community?
