What is affordable housing?
This is a question that is often asked, but rarely tangibly defined. It’s a concern and a question we at the Greenville Housing Find struggle with often. How do you define affordable housing in a community (Greenville) where having construction costs and demand for housing has skyrocketed in the past few years?
Well, let’s start with the definition.
According to HUD, affordable housing is housing that doesn’t take up more than a third of your monthly income.
So, if you’re earning $3,000 a month ($36,000/year), that’s no more than $1,000/month.
What does that mean in Greenville? Median income in Greenville is about $60,000 – that’s $5,000/month. Therefore, affordable housing is anything that doesn’t top $1,667/month. Depending on credit scores, down payments and other variables, that’s enough to buy a $250,000 home.
But here’s the problem: median housing values are now above $300,000 in the city, meaning median income families are being squeezed out. In the end, it comes down to the fact that as housing prices rise, families are forced to either overpay or move further away, putting both pressure on their wallets and overall quality of life.
That’s where the Greenville Housing Fund comes in.
he Greenville Housing Fund (GHF) originally launched in 2018 in response to the findings and recommendations in the 2016 “Balancing Prosperity and Housing Affordability” report, an eye-opening community-wide look at Greenville’s alarming shortfall of affordable housing options.
As a convener, advocate, investor, and funder, our goal is to work with key partners, developers, elected officials, community stakeholders, and residents to increase and preserve the supply of a variety of safe, accessible, high-quality, affordable housing choices to support economic growth and promote prosperity for all citizens throughout Greenville County.
