There’s a growing need for affordable housing for low-income New Castle County residents, especially rental units.
Carrie Casey is Manager for New Castle County’s Division of Community Development and Housing.
She says the demand is so high it took the county seven years to help find affordable housing for 1,500 people on their voucher waiting list.
“Where’s your expectation that you’re ever going to get housing if you have to wait seven years for your name to come up on a waiting list?And we’re just so fund-constrained that when we had sequestration hit us – they took $1 million off the top – we had to do everything in our power just to keep the people we had housed housed," Casey said.
A year and a half ago, they only opened the list for one day and took 500 names. They’re still working on finding spots for 300 of those individuals. And she says the waiting list won’t be opened again for another year or two.
New Castle County’s Division of Community Development and Housing receives 1,825 low-income housing vouchers - worth 17 million - from HUD each year. But Casey says this isn't enough: with both a lack of vouchers, and affordable rental units to match the demand.
"Affordable rental housing in the county is a huge issue: the lack of affordable housing, the gap," she said. "The demand for rentals is really high."
After receiving a voucher, many have a hard time finding an affordable rental unit within the 120-day time period allotted through the program.
Just last week, the Delaware Housing Coalition published its annual housing affordability report.
It found the average renter wage in New Castle County is $17.36 and the living wage needed to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment is $23.27, Coalition Executive Director Patricia Kelleher says that’s a huge – and growing – affordability gap.
"The county did suffer a lot during the foreclose crisis and so many people who were homeowners are now in the rental market," Kelleher said. "Millennials, many of them, are choosing to rent rather than commit to home ownership."
And Kelleher says rental development in the suburbs targets those with higher incomes, leaving those with low or extremely low incomes few options.
Casey says that due to limited federal and state funding, the department is searching for creative ways to do more with less and seek out additional funding.
They’ve been holding landlord meetings twice a year to try to incentivize them to keep their rents affordable.
