Columns:: Study calls for workforce coalition to address state’s rural housing

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Columns::November 26, 2001

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Study calls for workforce coalition to address state’s rural housing

By Denise H. Horton
dhorton@uga.edu

A broad coalition—elected leaders, home builders, developers, the manufactured housing industry, state agencies, public school

FACS faculty members who worked on the study included (from left) Karen Tinsley, Anne Sweaney, Tom Rodgers, Janet Valente, Brenda Cude and Jorge Atiles. Photo by Peter Frey

officials, housing authority staff, nonprofit-housing organizations, real estate professionals, credit counselors and more—is needed to address Georgia’s need for workforce housing in rural parts of the state, a recent study shows.
Conducted by the Housing and Demographics Research Center of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, the study is the first to explore all aspects of workforce housing outside the Atlanta area.
The study was funded by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and was presented to the Georgia Rural Development Council last month.
Tom Rodgers, associate dean for public service and outreach at the college and one of the project leaders, says the report shows a distinct lack of housing choices for those earning between minimum wage and $60,000.
“Common sense might tell you that if you have a job and you have money then you can find housing, but that’s not necessarily true,” Rodgers says. “What we found, particularly in rural areas, was a shortage of rental properties, of single-family starter homes for sale, and of land available for building. All of this can impact whether a company chooses to build in a particular location. The bottom line is that much of Georgia’s workforce has to settle for inadequate housing because too few housing options are available.”
The first half of the 100-plus page report is an extensive secondary data analysis regarding housing and population trends in Georgia.
“As a state, we do not have any system to collect housing data on an ongoing basis,” says Brenda Cude, head of the housing and consumer economics department, which includes the HDRC. “We hope this study will be the first of an ongoing effort to collect housing information and provide it to decision makers at the city, county, and state levels.”
Doug Bachtel, professor of housing and consumer economics, oversaw much of the secondary data analysis, which drew on information from a wide variety of sources, including the U.S. Census, the Georgia Department of Revenue and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, the manufactured housing industry, and city and county officials.
Other FACS faculty members who worked on the study were Gladys Shelton, Jorge Atiles, Anne Sweaney, Janet Valente and Karen Tinsley.
The study’s findings include:
• To pay fair market rent in non-metro Georgia, an individual must earn $8.35 per hour and work 40 hours a week. The 19 percent of non-metro Georgians who work in retail or agriculture on average earn less.
• Someone earning $30,000 annually can afford a home costing no more than $86,800. The average sale price of a new home in Georgia is $157,801. Georgian households with combined annual incomes of less than $30,000 number 1.05 million.
• In Atlanta, 75 percent of new housing units are site-built homes for single families. Elsewhere in the state, 50–75 percent of new housing units are manufactured housing units.
• In many cases, teachers and industry upper management don’t live in the county of employment. In two of the three industries surveyed in the report, none of the managers lived in the county. This means a lack of involvement in the everyday life of these counties by important sectors of the workforce.

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