67. Housing Solutions
Sep 29, 2026 · 37 min · 9 segments
- Speakers
Jacqueline ChicoGuest
Emily AbbasHost
Emily OsweilerGuest
Michael BergerGuest
Sep 29, 2026 · 37 min · 9 segments
Jacqueline ChicoGuestEmily AbbasHostEmily OsweilerGuestMichael BergerGuest
When we say Central Iowa has an affordable housing challenge, what does that exactly look like for people who live here, for our neighbors?
So when we talk about this affordable housing challenge in central Iowa, I mean, to put it quite frankly, what we're talking about is that there's an absolute shortage of affordable housing, especially for our extremely low income renters and households.
And really what that looks like is that for every 100 extremely low income renters, there's only 23 that are affordable and available rental units that are affordable and available to those households.
They have to then go into units that are then unaffordable and they don't fit in their budget.
And so based off of that, that then leads to either eviction or homelessness.
And really what we're seeing also within unaffordable housing is that people's wages and incomes aren't keeping pace with the increasing costs of housing as well.
And so really they're always trying to keep up with that, the housing costs going up, but they just can't do it with the wages and the jobs that they have.
And so a lot of people assume this is a homeless issue, but this is not just about people who are experiencing homelessness.
Who else should we be thinking about when we talk about affordable housing, bigger picture, broader topic?
I would say the biggest population that we should be thinking about here is our ALICE households.
And really, it's a framework that United Way of Central Iowa uses to talk about households that are working, working hard full-time, but yet they're not able to afford their most essential needs.
And these are people you brush shoulders with when you go out into the community, people that work at restaurants, people that welcome you to businesses that you go to.
When we say Central Iowa has an affordable housing challenge, what does that exactly look like for people who live here, for our neighbors?
So when we talk about this affordable housing challenge in central Iowa, I mean, to put it quite frankly, what we're talking about is that there's an absolute shortage of affordable housing, especially for our extremely low income renters and households.
And really what that looks like is that for every 100 extremely low income renters, there's only 23 that are affordable and available rental units that are affordable and available to those households.
They have to then go into units that are then unaffordable and they don't fit in their budget.
And so based off of that, that then leads to either eviction or homelessness.
And really what we're seeing also within unaffordable housing is that people's wages and incomes aren't keeping pace with the increasing costs of housing as well.
And so really they're always trying to keep up with that, the housing costs going up, but they just can't do it with the wages and the jobs that they have.
And so a lot of people assume this is a homeless issue, but this is not just about people who are experiencing homelessness.
Who else should we be thinking about when we talk about affordable housing, bigger picture, broader topic?
I would say the biggest population that we should be thinking about here is our ALICE households.
And really, it's a framework that United Way of Central Iowa uses to talk about households that are working, working hard full-time, but yet they're not able to afford their most essential needs.
And these are people you brush shoulders with when you go out into the community, people that work at restaurants, people that welcome you to businesses that you go to.
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