Morgan O’NealA newly released report from the Housing Insecurity Lab and LOU-HOME, Inc. sheds light on the urgent need for affordable housing in the LOU community. The report, titled “Housing Insecurity in Lafayette County, Mississippi: An Affordability Crisis,” says there’s been a 29% increase in the housing wage over the past decade.
According to other findings in the report, the housing wage required for a two-bedroom home in Lafayette County is $17.35 per hour. A worker earning the minimum wage in Lafayette County would need to work more than 80 hours per week –– the equivalent of two full-time jobs –– to afford a one-bedroom rental unit at fair market price.
“The data is clear: rising rents have far outpaced low-wage workers’ earnings, resulting in a housing climate in which even modest housing units are out of reach for a large share of our county’s residents,” the report states.
Last semester, the Housing Insecurity Lab — a University of Mississippi undergraduate seminar taught by associate professor of sociology James Thomas — conducted a study on housing in Oxford. The pandemic limited the lab’s access to primary data, which prompted the group to partner with LOU-HOME, Inc. to analyze publicly available data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Our report shows that the need for affordable housing in Oxford is severe and has only increased over time,” Thomas said. “Through this report and future reports, we hope to better inform community conversations on affordable housing and steer those conversations toward concrete solutions.”
Thomas said the report will hopefully empower Oxford community members to make stronger collective demands from their elected leaders.
“If you go out into our community and ask our community, ‘What are our biggest problems or challenges that we face?’ Affordable housing is going to come up overwhelmingly as the number one problem,” Thomas said.
Although the need for affordable housing in Oxford is being described as a growing crisis, Thomas said he has noticed a lack of urgency surrounding the problem within local government.
“A lot of the initiatives at the local government here in Oxford and Lafayette County have privileged the voices of the developers, and at the expense of people who live here and struggle to find and afford quality housing,” Thomas said.
LOU-HOME, Inc., a nonprofit organization founded in 2006, operates on the mission of increasing the availability and access to affordable housing and home ownership in the Lafayette-Oxford-University community. Thomas said it is the leading organization in the community to resolve the housing security crisis, but government help is needed.
“One of the most immediate things we need in our community is a housing trust fund, a dedicated stream of public dollars that would go toward subsidizing affordable housing,” Thomas said.
Afton Thomas, associate director for programs at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and James Thomas’s wife, is running to represent Ward II on the Oxford Board of Alderman. One of her campaign focuses is affordable housing.
“I hope everyone reads (the report), including our local leadership, but it’s also your civic duty and responsibility to think outside yourself,” Afton Thomas said. “ I think as a community, we do that. I think that our local leadership needs to also now do their part.”
Afton Thomas said she would like to hear the aldermen and the county supervisors discuss a housing trust fund, which has helped other communities recently. She also said that the housing crisis cannot be solved without discussing wages.
“We can lead by example. We can raise our wage floor, and that can only help alleviate some of that pressure on people to have affordable housing,” Afton Thomas said.
