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Op_ed_commentaries
Ellen Allen: The pandemic and West Virginia's housing crisis
Allen
For several years — long before the pandemic — Covenant House started pivoting to allocate more resources to the prevention of homelessness.
Last November we released eye-opening data about the benefits of homelessness prevention initiatives. Across West Virginia, there is a shortage of rental homes affordable and available to extremely low-income households whose incomes are at or below the poverty guideline, or 30% of the area median income.
Many of these households are severely cost burdened, spending more than half of their income on housing.
Severely cost burdened, poor households are more likely than other renters to sacrifice other necessities like healthy food and health care to pay the rent, and to experience unstable housing situations like evictions.Yes, this really happens. People make such devastating choices every day.
We know them. We help them.
Affordable housing shortages, underemployment, or unemployment during a raging pandemic makes the stakes all the higher.
Preventing homelessness is all that more critical in the face of this pandemic. We know first-hand how much easier it is — not to mention cost effective — to help a family remain in their home than it is to pick up the pieces caused by the devastation of a family eviction. The shortage of affordable housing poses an even greater threat to the health of our communities during a pandemic.
In West Virginia, there are only 62 homes for every 100 residents earning extremely low income. Those households earning 50% of the average median income do not fare much better at 74 homes for every 100 residents. This is an astonishing gap that produces visible homelessness in our neighborhoods. Compare this to 105 available homes for residents earning 80% of average median income and 108 for residents earning 100% of average median income. You may be surprised to learn that:
- 63,376, or 32%of West Virginia renter households are extremely low income.
- There is a shortage of 24,297 affordable and available rental homes for extremely low-income renters.
Who are our neighbors that comprise the demographic of extremely low-income renter? In West Virginia, 29% are in the labor force; 29% have a disability; 16% are seniors; 6% are enrolled in higher education; and 4% are single care givers to a family member requiring their help to survive. In the Mountain State, 65% of residents living in extremely low-income households are severely cost-burdened. Our experience tells us that many residents are spending more than 75% of household income on rent and utilities. This does not leave money for food, school supplies and health care, let alone recreational opportunities.
The housing crisis is a crisis of the absence of a living wage. We know that in West Virginia fair market value for a two-bedroom apartment is $778. For a family to afford this and pay utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing related costs — a household must earn $2,595 per month or $31,135 annually. This translates into an hourly wage of $14.97.
Now consider that the minimum wage of $8.75 per hour is much more common than $15 per hour. One must work 68 hours per week at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom rental home. This equates to 1.7 full-time jobs. This does not leave much room or money to cultivate quality of life issues that enrich our lives and our communities.
The most expensive areas to live are Martinsburg with a housing wage of $18.29 per hour; Putnam County with a housing wage of $17.60 per hour; Jefferson County with a housing wage of $17.29 per hour; and Morgantown with a housing wage of $16.92 per hour.
It is true that homelessness in West Virginia has been on the decline — at a faster rate on average than anywhere in the nation — for several years. However, the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the fragile state of the minimum wage economy and households trying to hold it together for their children and families.
Covenant House remains committed to preventing homelessness; we are dedicated to developing a stronger, safer, and more productive society in which more people can contribute and participate.
Ellen Allen is the executive director of Covenant House in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä.
Op_ed_commentaries
Susan Johnson: Some cross words over shrinking crosswords
Johnson
The recent shrinking of the Gazette-Mail has convinced me more than ever that the war on Boomers is real. Now the crossword and the Sudoku and the Jumble are even tinier than before. Who do these people think still buys a printed newspaper? Claudia Conway?
I’m becoming my parents. Only once did my late father, a deacon in the Presbyterian church, drop the “F†bomb in front of me. He was 75 at the time and had just purchased his first computer. We had convinced him he could do it, and all of us kids and grandkids signed up to provide him with 24-hour tech support.
He called me soon after I had sent him his first email.
“I can only read two lines of it!â€
He was using that tone of voice he used when he couldn’t peel open a package of bologna. “Where’s the rest of the email?â€
“Scroll down, Daddy,†I said in my calmest middle school teacher tone.
“Scroll down?!†His voice had gone up 2 octaves. “What the (expletive) does that mean?â€
I once taught school and managed to remember login info for dozens of programs.
Now retired, I have even more: the bank, my investment account, social security, Amazon, Wayfair, Etsy, Ebay, my doctor’s health portal, my email, my Facebook, my Twitter.
Don’t use the same password, they tell us. Okay, but then I forget them and have to go through the maddening process of changing my password. “What was the name of your first grade teacher?†It asks me. I scream into the little screen: How the (expletive) am I expected to remember that?
The next cheerfully helpful person who says, “Well, what I do is store all my user names and passwords in a file on my phone†is getting throat punched. I tried switching to face recognition technology, but now with my COVID-19 mask it doesn’t work. Plus I’m getting more and more pop up ads for lip wrinkle cream and botox. How do they know?
The worst is our smart TV. My husband and I between us have only a murky understanding of what is what. Is Roku an app? What’s Apple TV? Is it on the internet? When we lose connection his approach is to calmly call tech support and wait for 50 minutes to talk to an actual human while I stomp around the house dropping f-bombs the way my father taught me.
When we have to reset our password using the remote to click through the keyboard, we sound like Abbott and Costello. “Go right! Go right!†I say.
“Is this right?†he asks.
“No, wrong!â€
Setting up new devices requires one of us to read the tiny 17-digit WAP number on the modem. One holds a phone flashlight on the number while the other types it in. We are from the generation who were taught to never impose, so we get nervous when typing in a long number. Are we taking too long? Is the automated system getting impatient with us? It is rolling its robotic eyes?
My life is coming full circle: We now have to suffer the indignity of our children trying to help us.
They’ve started buying us products like the Nut Smart Tracker to help us find our devices. But what do you do when you misplace the Nut Smart Tracker? Buy a Nut Smart Tracker tracker?
They recommend apps on my phone to help me find my phone. But to use those apps I have to login on another device and remember the username and passwords. You know, the ones I saved in that file on my phone. Once the Find Your Phone app showed me a map of my house with a blinking light where my phone was. When I tried to move towards the blinking light it kept moving with me. Then I realized: my phone was in my jacket pocket. Next thing a popup ad appeared for assisted living facilities.
I really thought I’d age more gracefully than my dad, but how can I when the number crunchers at the Gazette-Mail think it’s cost-effective to keep shrinking my puzzles? Then they rub my nose in it by expanding the obituary section.
Susan Johnson’s column My Side of the Mountain appears weekly in the Nicholas Chronicle. Johnson is a frequent Gazette-Mail contributor.
Op_ed_commentaries
Danny Jones: Trouble ahead for GOP
Danny Jones was the mayor of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä during the water crisis.
Danny Jones (copy)
Next month there will be a presidential election in our country and it is not going to be close. I am not stating this as a preference but as a prediction. Most of my personal acquaintances are for President Trump (see: older white guys).
Not only is Joe Biden going to win, but there is a good chance it will be called on election night. President Trump is behind in almost every state that he should be taking for granted. He is behind in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Georgia. These are states he would have to run the tables on to be elected and he may not carry even one.
He is losing in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. President Trump will lose the popular vote by at least 10 million and that lead will probably increase by election day.
Let’s put it this way: If Pennsylvania and Florida are called early for Biden, it is over. Substitute Ohio for Florida, and it is over. I would also submit that it will be over by the next day or maybe even called election night.
Furthermore, I cannot see any state where President Trump will get a higher percentage of votes than he did in 2016.
This brings into question the U.S. Senate. The GOP is in trouble there, too. While the GOP will pick up a seat in Alabama, they are likely to lose in Colorado and Maine. Iowa, Montana and North Carolina look doubtful.
If the GOP goes under 48 in the U. S. Senate, everything is up for grabs.
The first thing to go may be the filibuster rule. West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s vote may be crucial here. Also watch for an expanded Supreme Court and D.C. Statehood.
After all of this happens, the GOP needs to decide if it wants to be a national party or not. There is no long-term gain to voting for someone just because they are “the craziest person in the race.†They also may want to reflect on whether they want to expand to allow mainstream folks back in the party (see: myself, Rod Blackstone, etc.).
To my Trump-supporting friends, there will be other elections and President Trump will carry West Virginia. But our state will not be enough to prevent what will be an electoral onslaught.
Reflective thought and conversation needs to be had by the GOP after the election.
Danny Jones is a former four-term ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä mayor.
crosswords
crosswords
I’m probably starting to sound like the proverbial broken record, but for someone who claims to not be a politician, Jim Justice out-old-schools the best (worst?) of the old-school politicians.
In his latest episode, after sitting on three-fourths of the $1.27 billion of federal CARES Act pandemic relief funds for six months, Justice finally announced Wednesday the launch of a program to distribute $25 million of that stockpile to assist households with delinquent utility bills.
The timing — coming four months after he originally announced he would dedicate that amount for utility bills — could not appear more political, falling on the first day of early voting and 13 days before Election Day.
Never mind estimates that West Virginia residents currently owe at least $50 million in delinquent utility bills. (Public Service Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Lane said Wednesday that some 133,000 households will be eligible for the CARES Act funding, which works out to about $188 per household, which helps but won’t get most households above water.)
Also peculiar is that the funds only apply to utility bills dated from March 1 to July 31, a period when most West Virginians received $1,200 stimulus checks and most unemployed West Virginians were eligible for $600 a week in supplemental unemployment benefits.
(I tried to get additional information about the program, but, as usual, the governor’s expansive and expensive communications division did not respond.)
The program also does nothing to help West Virginians who are facing eviction or foreclosure because of delinquent rent or mortgage payments, something Justice has repeatedly mentioned in calling on Congress to pass another round of stimulus funding, even as he sits on $969.7 million of CARES Act money, according to the latest figure from the state Auditor’s Office.
(That includes $587 million “parked†to pay future unemployment claims, even though WorkForce West Virginia’s own projections estimate only a $216 million shortfall.)
As with Justice’s many recent appearances around the state to announce grants or projects that have been in the works for months or years, the timing of the launch of the utility payment program, along with the program’s many built-in limitations, rings hollow with the voting season underway.
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Back in the day (and by that, I mean before cellphones and email), when things would get slow during a legislative session, statehouse wire service reporters Andy Gallagher and Brian Farkas would make up a rumor, go up to the well of the rotunda and tell the “rumor†to one lobbyist each, and then rush back to the Press Room to see how long it would take the rumor to come back to them. Sometimes, they would barely get back before their (landline) phones would ring, or someone would pop his head in to say, “Have you heard the latest?â€
Back in July, when Senate leadership was blocking a bipartisan effort by legislators to call themselves into special session to appropriate CARES Act funds, I speculated on this page that I wouldn’t be surprised if Justice rewarded soon-to-be-ex-Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, with a high-paying job in his administration, for permitting Justice to continue to allocate funds without constitutionally mandated legislative oversight.
I further speculated that the job could be chief of staff, since Mike Hall — who has been wholly invisible in that role for some time, with most of his duties performed by Justice advisor Bray Cary — would as of August reach the three years of service time needed to turn a small legislative pension into a big state pension.
Lately, the rumor has been picking up steam, including publication in a political column whose author cited unnamed sources who said that it is indeed Justice’s plan to make Carmichael chief of staff in January, if Justice is reelected.
Most of my best sources are either retired or passed on, so I can’t verify whether that claim is accurate, or whether like the statehouse press corps rumor mills of yore, it’s a matter of a column item taking on a life of its own.
The rumor has gained momentum to the point where Carmichael last week was moved to go on social media to post a denial, which assuredly only added fuel to the fire that the rumor has substance.
