In case you didn’t see it, NBC News published a nationwide analysis of housing affordability. The map shows where you can live based on your annual salary. The point of the article is that there is a growing gap between what people make and how much it costs to own a home. Housing affordability is a big and growing issue because the alternative to owning a home is renting – and guess what’s also becoming unaffordable: rent!
There shouldn’t be any surprise about the affordability of Washtenaw County. To buy a house here, one needs a minimum salary of $89,000. At that income level, a person is locked out of living in just one other county in Michigan: Grand Traverse. To buy a house there, you need to make at least $146,000.
But $89,000 is nowhere near what the average WCC grad makes. Or can even hope to make with just a WCC degree. That means WCC grads probably don’t make enough money to live in Washtenaw County unless they go to a four-year university. (And graduate.)
According to WCC, the average graduate makes $36,000, so on that income, a WCC grad could live in one of just seven counties in Michigan: Clare, Gratiot, and Iosco in the Lower Peninsula, and Dickenson, Iron, Ontonagon and Schoolcraft in the Upper Peninsula.
That’s … remarkable.
Adding a few thousand dollars more to the household would open up Wayne County, but that would be the only place in Southeast Michigan that a WCC grad could afford to live. That would also open up Saginaw, Huron, Arenac, Ogemaw, and Alpena counties as affordable options in the Lower Peninsula, and Delta or Gogebic counties in the UP.
Housing affordability raises an important question
What are we doing at WCC? If we’re not offering educational programs that pay enough to enable graduates to work AND LIVE in Washtenaw County, why are we throwing $75M at WCC every year? None of these graduates can remain here. No one can buy a home here. The housing affordability gap is so large that it’s hard for new graduates to overcome.
At best, WCC creates a workforce that must commute from Wayne County, while spending several thousand dollars annually on car insurance, gasoline, and car maintenance. And about 400 hours of commuting time. At worst, it creates a workforce that must move out of the area to live and work somewhere they can afford.
At $38,000 that’s about 25%-30% of the counties in Ohio, the majority of counties in Illinois, two thirds of the counties in Iowa, most of the counties in Western Pennsylvania, and about one-third of the counties in either Eastern Kentucky or Western New York.
But it isn’t Washtenaw County.
Why are Washtenaw County taxpayers paying for people of prime working age to go elsewhere? Where is the return on our substantial annual investment in WCC? How is this beneficial in any way to the citizens of Washtenaw County. How does this do anything besides increase the housing affordability gap?
Most importantly, whose ass-backwards idea was this? Who approved this? Who is ok with paying to train and educate people (who were likely born here and grew up here) to go somewhere else?
And if it takes nearly $90,000 to buy a house here, exactly who is going to move here from anywhere else?
Why are Washtenaw County taxpayers funding this insanity?
Photo Credit: Gilbert Mercier , via Flickr
