Ernesto Aguilar
KZYX studios in Mendocino County, California.
Many people are aware of the challenges of urban gentrification. In March, more than a dozen big city mayors created a coalition to address the problem of lack of housing in big cities.
But there is also an affordable housing crisis in smaller cities and rural America. Community radio stations, an essential news resource in small towns across the country, have come to the rescue, reporting on this largely overlooked story.
Short-term rentals, temporary employment, and the collapse of key industries are all contributing to an increasing challenge of finding a home.
In Mendocino County, California, a roughly 4,000-square-mile region containing less than 90,000 people, the local radio station KZYX has focused attention on the housing crunch. Here the lumber and fishing industries have faded, and many properties are vacation homes and often sit empty.
“The jobs that are coming in are minimum wage jobs, and in beautiful areas [like ours] property is expensive,” explains Jeffrey Parker, the general manager of KZYX, which covered affordable housing in the wake of the recent California wildfires.
“The jobs that are coming in are minimum wage jobs, and in beautiful areas like ours property is expensive.”
KZYX has sought to relate the area’s resulting shortage with programs like Mendocino Works. Parker says audiences, including the county’s supervisors, are receptive because of the widely acknowledged need for affordable housing, California’s persistent drought, and the growing desire for an intelligent development plan.
“How do we think about alternatives to standard, non-sustainable California ranch homes—places without systems for limiting use of water and energy?” Parker asks. “These were not real considerations years ago, and the houses are terribly inefficient.”
As the April defeat of a California bill to loosen restrictions on building heights highlights indicates, affordable housing is a complicated matter. With its longform format, community radio is well suited to explore many facets of the issue.
In Nevada City, California, community radio station KVMR hosted a local affordable housing forum. Grand Marais, Minnesota community radio station WTIP looked at the effect of vacation rentals on housing in its area. In these intimate towns, where the views are grand and properties sparse, housing prices and rental rates for residents have an impact unlike anything major metros, with far more properties, ever experience. Such broadcast journalism is one of the few avenues for community members to share their stories.
Small cities are facing housing challenges too. Rents in Boulder, Colorado, are far higher than in nearby Denver. The town’s KGNU radio tackled the matter of affordable housing in its Homeless in Boulder series.
In New York’s Tompkins County some 40 percent of renters are “rent burdened,” meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. The Tompkins County Health Department assessment revealed one in six families with children under the age of five have incomes below the poverty level.
Community radio station WRFI has partnered with Ithaca College to produce Bridged, an eight-part series focused on the local housing crisis. Among the topics it examined was the effect of a transient student population on rent and access to Section 8 housing.
“The best way to address these issues was to take a collaborative approach,” relates WRFI News Director Katelyn Harrop. “We reached out to many officials and the community, and didn't tell the story unless we had affected voices and a solutions-based approach.”
KCSB, the University of California at Santa Barbara’s student-run station, has aired ongoing coverage of the housing crisis in its city of about 90,000. News Director Lisa Osborn observes that, as an historic community with strict rules on construction, the city of Santa Barbara has prohibited buildings taller than four stories since 1930. In addition, renovations of aging duplexes and apartment buildings, once the go-to rental option, are resulting in higher rents.
“People are satisfied living in older places with affordable rent, but in recent months the city has cracked down on at least one major property owner, alleging the conditions of some of their units are sub-par or even uninhabitable,” Osborn says. “Some residents are seeing rent hikes so steep that it’s effectively an eviction notice for working class families and individuals who were already struggling to get by.”
KCSB has also reported on a range of controversial student housing options, including “tripling up” residents.
Communities across the country are making some progress on this issue. In Crested Butte, Colorado, KBUT has aired reports of town leaders levying higher taxes on short-term rentals, asking voters to create an affordable housing fund, and going to court to make housing available.
“At a meeting, four different people quoted KBUT’s story as recommendation to council leaders on how we should be addressing these issues in our city,” says KBUT News Director Chad Reich.
Reich says his station’s affordable housing coverage comes from a personal place. He lives in Crested Butte affordable housing, has friends who have been evicted from elsewhere, and has seen the effects of the Great Recession on small ski towns. While Crested Butte once had older residences where seasonal workers lived, these properties were flipped and put on the short-term market, leaving fewer options for locals and driving up prices.
“This created the biggest problem since the mines closed,” Reich says. “Every home is basically a hotel and people with teaching and service jobs with homes have parties happening next door every night.”
The tipping point for both reporting and the town came during Crested Butte’s peak season.
“We rely on tourism, and restaurants were having to close because they couldn’t find employees,” Reich says. “Business owners are usually always saying ‘more commerce’ and so on, but once rents doubled and wages didn’t, they were forced to rethink.”
“Restaurants were having to close because they couldn’t find employees.”
With media consolidation putting pressure on local journalism, the role of community radio in reporting local news is more important than ever. KZYX’s Parker says community radio can often be a catalyst for local discussions of important issues such as housing.
“If we're doing this public radio thing just to make entertainment, I think we’d really be missing something,” Parker adds. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here, and I’m hoping we can be a part of that.”
Ernesto Aguilar is a writer and media professional based in Houston.