... the people behind the Urban Institute research. In traditional interview format, our experts talk about the nature of their work, offer insights on what they've learned, and describe the personal goals that keep them going.
Coauthor Kathy Pettit discusses the sixth annual “Housing in the Nation’s Capital” report on housing options and services for the elderly, disabled, homeless, and others with special needs. The annual reports, sponsored by the Fannie Mae Foundation, look in-depth at housing trends and policy opportunities in the Washington, D.C., region. Pettit, a research associate in UI’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities center, has been working on the series since it began in 2002.
Five Questions Archives
January 8, 2008
1. Why did you pick the special needs population as your focus this year?
The Fannie Mae Foundation wanted to focus on the homeless population because it’s the 20th anniversary of the Help the Homeless Walkathon. But all along we’ve used the annual report to study the housing market across the income scale, so we expanded the topic to housing for all people with special needs. That can mean anything from simple modifications, such as wider doors for people in wheelchairs, to in-home services, to nursing homes. We thought about what people need, not who they were, so it didn’t matter if they were homeless, elderly, or ex-offenders. From a planning perspective, a homeless person in a wheelchair and an elderly person in a wheelchair need the same type of accommodations. We have separate offices for aging, the homeless, and the mentally disabled, but they’re serving overlapping populations.
2. Does the report address the broader housing market as well?
The need for special housing and services affects a broad range of people—or soon will. The population is aging. The average up-front cost to buy into a continuing care community in this area is $272,000, with ongoing costs of $3,000 a month. For nursing services at home, the average elderly person would need to spend 60 percent of his income to pay for a part-time nurse, leaving 40 percent for rent, food, and medicine. We wanted to find out if we have enough special needs housing to serve the population today, but also if we will have enough in 20 or 30 years. We can start thinking about future needs in a smart way now, while we have time.
And affordable housing is not just a problem for people with special needs. Newspaper headlines highlight the housing slump, but while prices have gone down, they’re still high. The median price for a single-family home dropping from $445,000 to $438,000 in the third quarter will not help most people who are struggling with housing costs. So we’re trying to counter some of the headline-grabbing stories and remind people that affordable housing is still an issue in Washington.
3. The report warns of an impending surge in the number of residents with special housing needs and a lack of suitable and affordable housing. How serious and immediate is this problem?
About 500,000 people in the region have moderate or severe disabilities. A huge challenge is matching people to housing in the private market. There isn’t a reliable system to help people with special needs find suitable housing. Also, we found a shortage of group homes, particularly at the lower income levels, as well as a lack of affordable home services. This isn’t just a public sector problem because the vast majority of accessible and supportive housing is in the private market. There are ways that the government can help or hinder efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing and services, but the private sector has to be at the table as well. There is a lot we can do right now to get service providers talking to each other and to get developers thinking about innovative housing. But the need will ratchet up over the next 30 years as our area’s population ages.
Also, we have to keep in mind that the housing market is connected to the labor market. The people who serve those with special needs—nurses, home health aides, hospital service managers—also need affordable housing. In 2004, there were only 17 home health aides for every 1,000 people age 65 and older. We ranked 33rd out of 50 cities nationwide. Expanding the home services industry and moving up in the rankings requires more affordable housing.
4. What challenges did you face gathering data for this report?
Each year, we think it’s going to get easier and each year we pick a more ambitious topic. In last year’s report on housing and schools, we had one complicated data source from the public school system. This year, we had to pull together a variety of data sources into a comparable format to tell a story. We used census data first and then moved to private commercial sources to learn about assisted living, continuing care, and nursing homes.
The hardest part was getting data about supportive housing for mentally ill and developmentally disabled people because the information came from different agencies across several counties. It was difficult to get a count of what was available across the region, and even then we reported only on the inner suburbs. People are working very hard to provide services, but were isolated in their own area. Nobody has asked the question before about what is available in the metro region as a whole.
5. Do you follow up on topics addressed in past reports?
Last year’s report explored the link between housing and schools. Now, we’re working on a follow-up project with the District of Columbia education office, informing the plan for the city’s school closings. We’re also helping them look at the integration of housing and schools and how they interact to affect the quality of life in a neighborhood. So, there’s still research going on in that area.
Each year, we’ve chosen issues that we think are important and relevant, and really lay a framework for the dialogue. The report allows us to start conversations and connect people who may not have spoken before—introducing a person in the planning office with someone in the school district or connecting suburban social service agencies with agencies in the District. We are fortunate be a part of this series because we don’t just drop this year’s theme and move on to next year’s topic. It has been exciting and gratifying to have the reports build on one another and to start to see a network of people who are thinking about housing in the Washington area. We don’t provide all the solutions, but we do provide a different viewpoint and some good suggestions on how to approach the region’s housing challenges.
