Concerned residents and local organizations offering support services discussed barriers to fair housing in Franklin County, and brainstormed solutions, during a virtual information session hosted by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities on Thursday.
As participants outlined local housing challenges and the services their groups provide, Susan Worgaftik, who serves on the Greenfield Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners and as coordinator of Housing Greenfield, said the housing vacancy rate in Franklin County dropped to 1.3% in 2023. Worgaftik claimed this low rate spirals into anxiety for tenants when asking landlords for assistance, fearing homelessness.
With a median household income in Franklin County of about $30,000 less than the state average, the rent or mortgage that is affordable to locals is “considerably lower” than what would be affordable in the rest of the state, Worgaftik said. She also added that more smaller housing units fill the county when compared to eastern Massachusetts, leading to a higher cost per square foot and a competitive disadvantage when it comes to towns applying for state assistance to address housing shortages.
“Overall, as in many other concerns, we are seeking rural equity, where the policies of the commonwealth take the specific concerns of living and working here into account and take the context into planning and funding all kinds of housing here,” Worgaftik said.
In breakout rooms, participants discussed challenges in ensuring fair housing, and necessary steps local organizations and state agencies can take to clear these hurdles.
When asked to list fair housing challenges, virtual attendees in one breakout room raised a lack of diverse and accessible housing, high repair costs to older buildings, limited new housing development, long waiting lists for subsidized housing, and discrimination and stigma that formerly incarcerated individuals face when applying for housing.
Participants also discussed barriers to locals seeking or trying to keep housing, including low incomes, lack of accessible transportation, medical issues, moving expenses, expensive rent, and lack of access to internet or a smart device.
Disability rights advocate Betty Tegel, of Turners Falls, claimed accessible housing benefits individuals of many ages and pushed back against the idea of encouraging seniors to leave their homes to renovate the buildings for younger families.
“We really need to accept people where they’re at and understand that she may be disabled, but she is comfortable in her home, and the premise to force her out of her home that she’s lived in for 50 years because we project that a young family may need that building, that’s her personal choice,” Tegel said, mentioning an example of an older woman with disabilities who wishes to age in place.
Participants then discussed paths that the Office of Fair Housing and the Housing Trust Fund can take to address these challenges, including supporting landlords of smaller units, improving access to emergency assistance shelter systems, encouraging conversations between decision-makers and community stakeholders, and examining state practices that disadvantage rural communities.
Amanda Sanderson, executive director of the Resilience Center of Franklin County, told participants that the state often denies Resilience Center clients’ applications for emergency assistance shelter placements. The Greenfield-based nonprofit, formerly known as the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (NELCWIT), supports survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
Sanderson claimed that these denials are done on the basis that the applicant lacks proper evidence of having no other option for safe housing.
“I think that this office could investigate the practical application of policy change that seems, from a distance, like it’s fine and it’ll cut costs and no one will be victimized by it, but what we’re seeing is there’s actually massive victimization,” she said. “Decisions that are made at the state level sometimes need to be investigated and pushed back against.”
Kristina da Fonseca, director of SouthCoast Fair Housing, mentioned significant cuts to federal funding for fair housing programs across Massachusetts leading to a “crisis” of “funding cliffs.”
“If we don’t find alternate funding and alternate support to keep people doing this work, those resources might largely go away by the end of the year in various parts around the state,” da Fonseca said.
Mariah Kurtz, the senior livability planner at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG), stressed the importance of regional planning agencies like FRCOG collaborating and calling for change together.
The roughly 80 participants then left the breakout rooms to hear facilitators from the Three County Continuum of Care (Three County CoC) at Community Action Pioneer Valley share highlights from the small group discussions.
“The biggest barrier is money and has been money and is probably always going to be money,” discussion facilitator Wendi Warger said. “We stretch our safety nets as far as we can, and we’re doing good, but it’s just not enough. It never seems to be enough.”
Warger said her breakout room discussed seniors wanting to age in place, safety issues in emergency assistance shelters, lack of available and affordable units, and transportation issues that endanger fair housing access. They called for accessible housing, a recurring theme across the breakout groups.
Shaundell Diaz, discussion facilitator and Three County CoC program director, said her group looked at difficult decisions municipal employees must face that impact access to fair housing. She mentioned a town inspector condemning a building that violates codes can force a resident into homelessness, leaving the town employee in a difficult position.
To close the conversation, Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities Director of Fair Housing Whitney Demetrius thanked participants for voicing their perspectives and encouraged them to use the executive office as a resource.
“This was really our opportunity to create some new strategies, some new incentives to really work through affirmatively and proactively pursuing fair housing, because we understand that fair housing is fair living, and we understand that the way that we build and foster and uplift sustainable communities is by putting fair housing at the forefront,” Demetrius said. “We heard, again in western Massachusetts, people show up. You have something and people show up, and you guys have done just that.”