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As the coordinator of a Women’s Center at a local college, the most prevalent problem presented to me by students is affordable housing. During these days of "welfare reform" and "New economic opportunities" (especially for those willing to work for minimum wage or part-time with no benefits) many adults, a majority of whom are women, find themselves balancing the needs of work and a family with those of school or job-training programs. Hoping for better lives, they work hard for opportunities while the cost of housing enters the realm of nearly-impossible-to-afford.

Many women, while making the transition from welfare to work, or entering the workforce for the first time following a divorce or other change in life plans, find themselves ineligible for the Purchase-of-Care for child care that they were eligible for when they were in school or training. Many of them pay more than half of their take-home pay for child care, which is unavailable evenings, nights, and weekends. Public transportation is also unavailable evenings, nights, and weekends. Even a parent who is fortunate enough to work where benefits are offered must have the premiums deducted from their paychecks, always the case when covering children and spouses. Many two-parent families have one spouse working to support the family while one works to provide health insurance. If this worker must also pay for child care, one can see how little must be left, after transportation costs and lunch, to live on! As a single parent or as a two-parent household, insurance co-pays and deductibles and the cost of prescriptions add to an already heavy burden. Food stamp assistance is usually unavailable to these families as well.

While it is true that these issues face every family in America, those with higher than poverty-level incomes are better prepared to cope. For those living at or below the poverty level, the addition of $600 - $700 per month in rent for a family of four in Delaware makes many expenses impossible to pay. Food, clothing, shelter, and medical care are the barest essentials of living and, for most families, child care makes the essentials possible. If a family’s breadwinner can’t provide the barest essentials, the richest nation in the free world and the richest state in that nation have an obligation to find out why. It is an excellent plan to make people earn their own living unless they are unable to do so, but when a single parent or two parents are working until they can-t do any more and still can’t get by, something is seriously wrong.

Housing subsidy is one of the best ways to assist people in poverty. A family must at least have four walls in which to enclose themselves and whatever possessions they have, even if they have nothing else. In a civilized country, there should be no homelessness, regardless of the reasons for it. However, not only are Congress and state legislatures trying to "reform" subsidized housing, but they are doing so basically clueless as to the impact of these reforms on all citizens at all income levels.

A common complaint about subsidized housing is that drug dealers seem to congregate there. Most residents hate to see that going on in their communities and hate the guns and violence associated with that trade, but one of the reforms instituted was a credit check. The poorer people are, the more likely they are to have a bad credit report. But a person with a friend or relative who wants to deal drugs from their unit will have their bad credit paid off for them and will get an apartment in place of a person with no ties to an underground economy. If residents work with management and police to bring pressure on tenants who permit or participate in drug dealing, the dealers can’t move out because the mangers has to give them a bad reference. This makes residents forced to live with the problem for years while more are moving in every month. If a police investigation is successful in convicting a drug dealers of trafficking and/or other offenses, judges in New Castle County will not enforce the eviction proceedings brought by the management, although judges in Kent and Sussex Counties enforce the law well in that area. Why the difference in enforcing a state law?

The waiting lists for subsidized housing are years long, which should speak loudly of the need for that program. Getting on the lists is a cumbersome process. Although every management company that is phoned from the housing list tells you that they advertise in the newspapers when they are taking applications, the fact is that very few of them do or they advertise to free papers rather than the major Delaware newspapers that cost them money. This means that in order tp apply, one must hear "word-of-mouth" or see a flyer posted on a pole someplace. Having applied, and moving from place to place in shelters or with relatives, if you do not receive your letter informing you that you must up-date your application, you lose your place on the waiting list. It is possible to believe for months that you are nearly ready to move into your own home when you have actually been removed from the waiting list entirely!

A call to the New Castle County Section 8 Program will inform you that certificates have not been given out for years and will not be given out for years to come. You will not be able to get a clear answer as to why that is so. But when county officials decided to clear out a Wilmington-area motel with land under it that needs to be better developed, Section 8 certificates were given to every resident who needed to be moved out of there, truly a miracle in the area of availability!

Yes, affordable housing needs to be reformed, but by creating living wages, affordable rents, and savings programs that allow residents who work to improve their conditions of living so as to be able to save to move, instead of having their rent raised every time their income increases. This plan is probably the best housing reform idea in progress. Let hearings be held which consider testimony from low-income residents. Give them a voice in the decisions that impact their lives and let them know that the American Dream is available for everyone who reaches for it.