+ Visit Love Columbia’s Affordable Housing webpage to learn about local affordable housing partners, initiatives, and solutions.
+ Connect with Boone County Upward Mobility Fair and Inclusive Housing workgroups to join with others who are continually learning and seeking solutions.
+ Support an organization meeting basic needs of our unhoused neighbors. (Turning Point, Room at the Inn, Loaves and Fishes, Harbor House, CoMo Mobile Aid, VAC, Love Columbia)
+ Work with Love Columbia to pay for a month of rent to prevent eviction, an old utility bill that prevents securing permanent housing or an emergency hotel stay for families with children.
+ Sponsor utilities/maintenance for a Love Columbia transitional home where homeless families reset to secure permanent housing.
+ Join the Love Columbia Coaching team to help people find affordable housing, increase income, and enhance financial well-being.
Housing coach: create a housing budget, enhance rentability, identify housing options, learn tenant rights/responsibilities.
Career coach: create resume, apply for jobs, advance career.
Financial coach: learn essential financial practices, save and reduce debt, raise credit score.
+ Volunteer with the Love Seat Furniture Bank to help a family move their belongings or donate items to be matched with a need.
+ Share your expertise in a homebuyer class: lending, real estate, insurance, inspection, maintenance.
+ Inform city, county and state officials and your neighbors about the Columbia housing crisis and urge them to make solutions a priority.
+ Promote policy changes to remove regulatory barriers to allow more housing to be built and reduce the time and cost of building.
+ Promote community mindset changes: think smaller units, shared spaces, gentle density, affordable can be beautiful, homes for all our neighbors.
+ Look at Columbia with new eyes to see current unused or underutilized property that could become affordable housing.
+ Join a local commission, council or board that influences housing policy decisions and advocate for changes that will promote increasing affordable housing stock.
+ If you own rental property, consider how to make it more affordable.
Learn about programs to reduce costs to tenants (housing choice vouchers and energy efficiency improvement).
Consider renting to someone with a voucher or renting one of your units to a Love Columbia client at a lower rate.
Lend or lease a unit to Love Columbia’s transitional housing program.
+ Buy property to create affordable housing. Consider revitalizing a neighborhood by repairing a neglected or vacant property.
+ If you are part of a faith community, learn how houses of worship have created affordable housing from their underutilized space/land.
+ If you are a developer, learn about funding options to build affordable housing and work with others to build units ranging from income-based apartments to starter homes.
+ If you are a concerned citizen, dream big and collaborate with others across the business, nonprofit and government sectors to find ways to finance and build the housing we desperately need. Many cities have established housing production trust funds, passed housing bonds, and found ways to fund/incentivize building affordable housing.
Low supply coupled with post-pandemic inflation has given rise to extraordinary price increases that have pushed many into homelessness or priced them out of the homeownership market.
LOW SUPPLY
+ Rental housing under $1,000 a month has declined 28% over the past five years. Only 35% is under $1,000.
+ Only 5% vacancy, lowest in 10 years
+ Long waiting lists to obtain income-based housing and vouchers.
HIGH COST
+ Since 2019, Columbia rent prices have steadily risen.
23% for a one bedroom
19% for a two bedroom
31% for a three bedroom
27% for a four bedroom
+ Missouri led the nation in year over year rent increases in January 2024 (13.18%). Other states are seeing rent cool off or even decline.
+ Renters must earn $18.54 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment, and $24.46 for a three-bedroom. (Source: https://nlihc.org/oor/state/mo)
+ Since 2019, the average and median price for a single-family home in Boone County has increased 45%. (Source: midmohomefinder.)
The National Eviction Lab reports the leading predictor of eviction in the United States is having children. Skyrocketing rents have priced families needing larger units out of the market, forcing many families to double up with others or seek shelter in pay-by-the week hotels or in congregate shelters that often house chronically homeless adults. There is rising concern about the generational impact of this increased homelessness.
According to Ranita Norwood, Columbia Public Schools student services coordinator, transiency is the leading cause of poor academic performance. In February 2024, CPS reported 450 students experiencing homelessness and 80 students in foster care.
The CDC has recently completed a long-term study of eviction and reported a correlation with child neglect and abuse following a family experiencing eviction. Placement in foster care becomes more likely. The stress of becoming homeless cannot be overstated. Unhoused parents often share the heart-breaking questions their children ask about where they will sleep that night or when they will have a home again.
The work of Love Columbia would not be possible without the generous financial support from individuals and organizations throughout the community.
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