Call (888) 786-7243According to a new federal report, many families in Colorado can’t afford to buy a home. They have “severe housing cost burdens,” the Center for Housing Policy in Washington, D.C., tells us. Well, I already knew that. Instead of buying homes, they are renting small self-storage units from me in which to store all their stuff. In my units, families store their dreams: furniture, family heirlooms, things they collect as part of a hobby, musical instruments, and old photos and family letters. Some of it is stuff they plan to sell on Ebay or Craig’s List if they can’t find another way to make ends meet.
The Center for Housing Policy says that around 21 percent of Colorado families were burdened with severe housing costs in 2008. Our hometown, Denver, is a little worse than the Colorado average — 22 percent of Denver families have severe housing costs. Families haven’t benefited from lower housing costs, the feds tell us, because they haven’t moved. Really? Could it be that they haven’t moved because they can’t afford to sell their homes at a loss? Meanwhile homeowners are watching their payments for everything from their electric bills to heating costs to their adjustable-rate mortgage payments climb ever higher.
Rented property, like apartments — and self-storage units? — has remained just as affordable as ever, according to the Center.
Denver isn’t the only city with a severe housing cost problem. The CHP study says that things are just as bad — or even worse — in Florida, in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Orlando-Kissimmee areas, and in the California urban areas around Los Angeles-Long Beach, San Diego, and Riverside-San Bernardino. In general, the least affordable states, at least in terms of housing, are California, Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Nevada.
The most affordable states are North and South Dakota, Alaska, Nebraska, and Iowa. And the cities with the lowest housing burdens are Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Oklahoma City, Richmond, and Louisville.
Well, affordable or not, I am not moving to Pittsburgh and I am not moving to Alaska (even though I hear it’s almost as beautiful as Colorado there). I am staying right here in Denver — and I’m going to keep providing a place for families to store their hope until the day comes when they can finally afford the houses of their dreams.