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SURPRISE! I'M BAAAAAACK! Sorry, no more craft cocktails, no more face masks. But you could say the masks are coming OFF!
What follows is the story of our search for housing that fits our needs and budget. It has been a rude wake-up to the reality of the housing crisis. Of course, it is only a crisis if you are the one living through the process of dealing with it. Those already making payments on mortgages with rates below 6% already have that well behind them. But those days are long gone.
In nine years of living in our apartment we have seen the rent double. A couple years earlier, we knew the time was coming when we’d have to start looking for other places to live. In August 2022 we made three consecutive offers on apartments at the same condominium association where some friends of ours live. It would have been great to be so close. Someone else always got the nod. We decided to give that effort a rest.
My husband was still working and we had some time to think about it. By December the next year with employment suddenly ended, we had to reignite the work of finding a new place to live. The latest rent increase was going to be 20%, and to buy ourselves some time we extended the lease to June 2024. We had never had a difficult time finding another place to live, but 2024 is a very different year.
Now that we were on the cusp of retirement, we decided to cast a net wider than the Seattle area. We looked at the offerings from the north end of suburban Seattle to Bellingham. (That included Everett, Mt Vernon, La Conner, etc.) The PNW feels like home to us since we’ve been in Seattle for 42 years. I focused the scope of my search along the I-5 corridor. I looked at senior housing, and places offering the infamous LIHTC program. More on that later.
In previous years we had considered Bellingham as a good choice for relocation when the time was right. As I scoured the offerings across all types of housing, I learned first-hand about the limitations of what is available under the rubric of “affordable housing.” For example, I was informed by Whatcom county housing authority:
Unfortunately, as a married couple, your household is only eligible for our 1-bedroom waitlists which I suspect is why you were rejected. When a 1-bedroom waitlist opens, you will have to log back in to your online portal account and resubmit your application to each waitlist while it is open.
I couldn’t let this go, so I asked again to make sure I understood the basis of their reasoning.
Recently, we put in an application on an open waitlist but were rejected because we were requesting a two-bedroom apartment. I just want to clarify this point. Is it true that HUD will not allow a married couple/household to be eligible for a two-bedroom apartment? Is that true for every property that uses your program?
This is correct; a married couple according to our policy would be allocated at the most a 1 bedroom voucher or unit as determined by the program applied for. Should there be a medical need for an extra bedroom we of course can work with you to verify this and accommodate as needed, this would apply to all of our programs administered.
In fact, according to HUD rules, a married couple is considered “over housed” if they were to be granted a two bedroom apartment. (I wonder if snoring is considered a medical need for another bedroom. ? 😂 )
I lurched forward in my quest and checked in with a local Seattle community land trust. It offers a model for housing that I have often admired. But wait, not so fast.
They had a townhome available for purchase at an amount I felt we could afford. We offered them a 36% down payment in order that our monthly payments on a mortgage would more likely be within our means. They wanted eligible households to have an annual income of at least $69,000. I was hoping that with a larger down payment we could offset that to accommodate our reduced income. We technically had enough funds to purchase it outright. But they were adamant about their requirements and rejected our application. I have to say that was a shock. We had to prove possession of every penny we owned. They would have seen that even with reduced income from paychecks, we had enough access to cash to make it work. Apparently, they didn’t think so. This is when my head explodes if I think too much about this particular scenario. We suspected that we didn’t fit their criteria for reasons having nothing to do with sources of money. Maybe two people together don’t qualify as a family.
Getting shagged by SHAG
The last straw was when we got on a waiting list for an apartment in Bothell at a SHAG location called Boulevard Place. SHAG = sustainable housing for ageless generations. Cute, huh? We were told in December of last year that it could take up to six months for an apartment to become available. That is, within the tax credit program reserved for about twenty percent of their units. Then in March there was an opening and we began the lengthy paperwork process once again for the LIHTC program. This stands for Low Income Housing Tax Credit. It is administered by the Washington Housing Finance Commission. And as you can imagine, its rules are stringent.
We were confident that our situation would clearly fit within their stipulations for being below 60% of AMI (area median income). I work part-time and my husband’s income from unemployment for the allotted six months would not put us over the limit. We presented our documents in-person and were soon told that we made too much money. The first words out of my mouth were:
“That’s not possible.”
Weak justifications ensued. But what we soon came to understand, much to our disbelief, was this: When an unemployment claim is opened, it is considered as such for a year. Even though the payments to the recipient stop at the end of six months, the claim lingers in an “open” status. So the idea is that there could be circumstances that cause funding or job acquisition to occur.
This is how it was put to us:
The guidelines of the LIHTC program indicate we are to calculate 52 weeks of unemployment if the individual is currently receiving unemployment benefits, which he appears to be based on the letter he provided from the ESD. An unemployment claim is considered open for an entire year (52 weeks) even though benefits are only paid for 26 weeks.
We had a very similar situation recently and I confirmed with WSHFC (the monitoring agency) that we are to still to include the entire 52 weeks of benefits.
I know this is hard for our applicants to understand but it is the rule under the LIHTC program.
If they do not meet the qualifications with including 52 weeks of unemployment, then they are not eligible for a tax credit unit.
We were told we could consider a market rate apartment. We said our good-byes.
Bellingham or bust
No more would we consult the charts for income limit restrictions at various points along the spectrum of AMI. We would have to work within market rates and hope for the best. We looked online. We set up appointments. We spent a couple days in Bellingham and did a few walk-throughs. And as the fates twisted, we found ourselves juggling two offers! We’ve already said yes to one, but we will go back and look at the other before deciding where to land.
The story is not over yet, but ….
Wait for the next installment.
** On another topic: If you review previous posts, you will notice grey boxes where once I had links to the books I mentioned on Amazon. Well, Amazon decided to disable these references because obviously they weren't driving any traffic to the books!!! So my blog gets the grey box treatment where a functional piece of code once existed. I refuse to apologize for corporate bad behavior. I have very little readership, but I do love books. It's not my fault no one clicks through to the corporate overlords!
