Helping working families buy — and keep — their homes

Can you afford a home in the community where you work? For more and more families in Snohomish County, the answer is no.

Whether you call it a lack of affordable housing or work-force housing, the problem looks the same: Home prices in the past few years have risen sharply, far outpacing household-income growth. As a result, many families have been priced out of the homeownership market, and many of those who have been able to purchase a home are paying too much of their income for it. From 2004-07, the cost of a median-priced home in Snohomish County rose from $235,000 to $370,000 — a whopping 57 percent — as incomes rose only 3 percent. While the years of double-digit home appreciation are gone, the affordability gap they produced is here to stay.

While lower-income families have been feeling this squeeze for years, the recent housing boom has snared middle-income families as well. According to the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, a family earning the median income in Snohomish County is now 20 percent short of the income needed to buy the median-priced home. As a result, many working families — including schoolteachers, nurses and police officers — can no longer afford to own a home in Snohomish County.

This is a crisis for families, communities and our economy. When families can't afford to buy a home, they are excluded from one of the greatest financial tools available to them — equity. As a result, more families will lose the opportunities and safety net that equity can provide — to send children to college or help pay off unexpected medical costs — as well as the stability of a place to call home.

As we are seeing all too clearly through the subprime-loan debacle and resulting foreclosure crisis, purchasing a home is not the financial Holy Grail. Homeownership is an asset only if it is affordable to families now and over the long term. 2006 census data show that three of every four Snohomish County residents who earn $75,000 or less and hold mortgages have payments that are unaffordable — defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as more than 30 percent of one's income.

Add the rising costs of transportation to the mix, and many of these families are paying more than half their incomes on housing and transportation alone. This leaves less money for other necessities and increases stress as families try to balance their current needs and save for retirement.

Addressing this problem requires comprehensive solutions and strong public, private and nonprofit collaboration. We need to continue increasing the state's investment in the Housing Trust Fund while looking at ways to reduce the escalating costs of construction — through tax incentives, and growth management and zoning changes that increase the development of affordable work-force housing.

We also need commitments from local employers. For example, HomeSight and Snohomish County are paving the way for new programs known as employer-assisted housing benefits. Through these programs, employers help their employees become homeowners by providing them with direct benefits like down-payment assistance, or by connecting them with homebuyer education and financial-counseling programs, home-loan programs, or other benefits.

Snohomish County, which sponsored a Workforce Housing Summit in January, has made a commitment to help its workers access the tools they need to become homeowners. HomeSight, with the support of Freddie Mac, the county, and local lending and nonprofit partners, is working with employers to provide homebuyer education and financial counseling to their employees.

Employer-assisted housing programs are a winning strategy. Employers have a more stable work force; employees and their families gain tools to buy their first homes. When families can purchase homes closer to their jobs, they save money on transportation costs, reduce their commute times and stress, and generate less sprawl and pollution — all of which improve their quality of life and benefit the broader community and economy.