Workforce Housing
In our consumer oriented society those mostly affected by the daily quest of meeting their expenses are middle income persons and as long as they can hold a job their lives go on fairly well with choices to improve themselves, travel on vacations, and move to other cities and communities much without affecting the lives of others when their occupations are not related to community services.
With the advancement of technology workers that in their jobs had to go through a period of training just to qualify for a position, example Firemen, Teachers, Nurses and other similar community service occupations find themselves becoming skilled, experienced, and to a point essential in the job they perform. They are Workforce persons.
This persons get to form the core that maintains a quality of life in their communities and become the citizens responsible for the continuing progress of their community, city , county and state. As stable citizens they grow a family and improve their lives, they are the ones who change jobs less frequently, and seldom as a whole move away to other cities, states or countries. As their families grow and children need to move up to schools they find themselves in need of larger and/or better housing.
Those who work in the Real Estate profession continually find buyers from the “Workforce” sector who qualify for the 30% of gross yearly income to be approved to buy a needed house but most frequently this buyers do not have the funds necessary to meet a required down payment simply because salaries have always increased less than home costs and prices have increased, considering property taxes and insurance costs increases.
It does not happen with single isolated cases and happens very subtly with numbers of cases not publicized openly but what happens is the negative result in the quality of life of the community when new replacement workers have to be trained at higher cost to the employer and decrease in the performance and quality of the work.
Some actions have been taken to correct this problem, for instance the Federal Housing Administration has created mortgage programs tailored to this home buyers but have been falling short of needs, the same as programs for Employer -Assisted Housing to retain workers by helping to reduce commuting, and motivating employees efforts have fallen short. Influential mayor organizations have ignored the problem for many years.
Just in the year, 2009, the National Association of Realtors has created a Grants fund Program of 5 million dollars to make “Workforce” housing more available by awarding this funds through their state Realtor associations or their housing foundations to support workforce housing initiatives in their states .
Realtors are community builders and recognize the needs of families in today’s market to purchase and keep their homes in the communities where they live and contribute to its progress. In our today’s economy where billion dollars amounts are beginning to sound modest, when the government talks about billions and trillions, a grants program of five millions may sound too little, but is a start and when well accepted and implemented they tend to grow and that is the hope we must have.
Juan Selaya-Broker Realtor-Certified International Property Specialist
J.A.S. Properties Marketing Corp- 601 E Chaminade Dr. Hollywood, Florida 33021 U.S.A.
T 954 966 5529–Fax 954 962 1524– Mobil 954 649 4063
Web http://www.juanselayarealtor.com
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