Unaffordable Housing in Fairhope
Jackie's house was paid for when she sold it and married a man she met at church. She used the money to help pay for updates to the house they were to share together, and to pay off a few bills. But her husband became abusive and the marriage ended, causing Mary to flee with her son in November 2017.
"I went in with something and came out with nothing,” she said. “I thought I had planned better than this, but God is taking care of me and I have to keep trusting that it will keep going that way.”
There have been times of homelessness on the Eastern Shore for Jackie and her 11-year-old son, sleeping on the couches of friends and family, or staying for a few weeks in an Airbnb. In 2018, they moved six times in seven months.
A single parent with no child support, Jackie works two jobs and lives within her means. There is little money in savings for emergencies, no expenses left to cut, and the stress has already cost Jackie half of her long hair. Cable was dropped and she shops online at Walmart every two weeks, sticking to her $70 food budget.
Jackie said she can name 10 women on the Eastern Shore in the same situation. Women without a backup plan who were sent into crisis by domestic violence or unforeseen medical expenses. Women making too much money to qualify for Section 8 housing assistance, reduced school lunch and food stamps, but not making enough to survive by themselves.
"Factor in $1,000 to $1,400 a month for a roof over your head, then taxes, utilities, car insurance, and health insurance, and the money is gone," she said.
Buying a small house with a mortgage payment in the $700 to $800 range is Jackie's dream, but she said investors have bought most of the houses in the lower price ranges and charge rent or a selling price that low-income families can’t afford.
"No one at this level thinks we will ever achieve paying $200 a square foot for a house in Fairhope, but how do we encourage builders to build in the $90,000 to $120,000 range so more people can own a home?" Jackie asked.
Jackie said she dreams of more than just an affordable home for herself. She wants to buy a piece of land where she can build several small houses for other single parents on the Eastern Shore.
"Someone has to try to help,” she said.
Ecumenical Ministries, a social services agency in Fairhope, has provided help to low-income families and individuals in Baldwin County for 50 years. Executive Director Sally Dean said affordable housing is the biggest issue for the working poor in Fairhope and everywhere else in the country, but there are no easy answers. Ecumenical Ministries started at St. James Episcopal Church to help people in crisis. “Look at people who are 50 percent below the median income and bringing in $1,200 a month,” Dean said. “That is our at-risk population for homelessness in Fairhope.”
Those with the lowest annual wages in Fairhope are in the accommodation and food services industries, and retail, which have average annual incomes of $21,022 and $29,187, respectively, according to the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance. This lowest income group spends 100 percent of their income making ends meet, with 24.8 percent going to housing (Bureau of Labor and Statistics).
Fairhope has many employees in the service industry who are limited to the money they can make, Dean said. A mom working at a fast-food restaurant with a couple of children is barely keeping her head above water. If a child gets sick for a few days and she can’t go to work, she doesn't get paid, and that is all it takes to start sliding down the slope. Ecumenical Ministries helps provide a path to long-term economic stability.
“The ‘haves’ need to look around and realize how hard the ‘have-nots’ are trying,” Dean said. “They are working for their money, but they don't have the same opportunities that others have.”
That was from an interview with Dean before the Coronavirus. Today, Dean says more families who have never called Ecumenical before are asking about services and learning what is available. She said we are “still on the front side of a bigger problem” and “the first part of June is when it could hit.
“Families are waiting for the other shoe to fall when they have used their unemployment and stimulus,” she said. “The longer this goes on, unemployment won't be enough. We are bracing for the unknown when all of those who live paycheck to paycheck are no longer doing fine.”
Emmy’s Thrift Store, which helps fund Ecumenical Ministries, has been closed since mid-March due to the pandemic. A GoFundMe to help them through has raised $1,675 of the $60,000 goal.
Poverty in Fairhope is not the same as in big cities, Dean said. “We are somewhat rural, but as Fairhope grows and the cost of housing increases, the gap will keep growing. This is a community problem because we need our people in the service industry.”
There are hidden sections of Fairhope with people living in substandard housing struggling to survive, Dean said. People are living in old houses and trailers on their property outside the city limits, some in trailers more than 30 years old. Through the Ecumenical Ministries Repair Baldwin program, volunteers repair homes enough so that families can stay in them, but sometimes the structures are too far gone.
“We have roofed a lot of houses to keep them livable,” she said. “Families live on their property for generations and want to stay there. They also can’t afford to go anywhere else.”
“There is some housing in Fairhope for $600 that none of us would want to live in,” she added.
The median home price in Fairhope is $425,000, and rents below $1,000 for a decent place to live are hard to find. People wait for years to get into Spring Run, Fairhope’s only income-based housing (Meadowview and AHEPA are income-based for the elderly). At Shellbrooke Pointe Apartments on Twin Beech Road, rent begins at $610 for a one-bedroom apartment. The complex runs at 100 percent occupancy, and a binder in the office lobby is filled with families waiting for a vacancy.
Dean said Fairhope needs good apartments for $300 a month, where kids can grow up in a nice environment, and also housing for seniors based on their income. But builders are only building high-end homes and apartments because, “if you can get that much money, you build it,” she said. Affordable housing has to be solved by the government at the county and city level because, “the private sector is not going to do it on their own.”
Fairhope Mayor Karin Wilson agrees.
“Inside the city limits of Fairhope there is prosperity and we look good, but most people don’t know that many families are underserved and struggling in the county beyond the city line,” Wilson said. Strategic planning and better land use could lift everyone up, she added, but there are areas that would need to be annexed into the city.
“Fairhope needs mixed-income housing that includes affordable housing,” she said. “We can build interesting communities that include more people.”
These are the things the city can do to plan a future that is inclusive, where everyone is given opportunity, Wilson said.
“Affordable housing can be a part of the overall plan, but right now the only thing planning our future is developers,” she said.
Wilson said a recently announced a comprehensive land use plan covered by Restore Act funding that will take 18 months to analyze everything that makes up Fairhope, including policy.
Fairhope can have pocket neighborhoods with smaller homes, but the typical developer is not interested when they can build bigger planned developments and make more money, Wilson said.
“Right now developers are knocking on people's doors to buy their land and build whatever they want outside of the city limits,” she added.
Another solution is legalizing accessory dwellings in Fairhope, Wilson said. This would include a granny suite or a garage apartment that helps parents or kids, as well as long-term vetted renters. She wants this included in the comprehensive land use plan.
There is not just an affordable housing problem in Fairhope, there is a housing problem for everyone, and the comprehensive land use is needed immediately, according to Hunter Simmons, Fairhope’s housing and zoning manager. Fairhope has doubled in size over the last decade, which is causing growing pains, he said. In 2019, the zoning commission approved 624 single family lots which represents about 2,000 more people and more than 1,200 cars.
“We stay late at work many days, and planning meetings are now 3-and-a-half hours just to try and keep up,” Simmons said. “Families want smaller lot sizes and developers are putting more houses on a lot. It would be nice to have apartments with lower rents, but no one is building them. Apartments also drive up population density and the schools are begging us to slow down because they can’t keep up with the growth. There are areas that could be affordable housing, but it is market-driven.
“There is also a distrust of all forms of government right now that makes it hard to zone and plan for the future,” he said. “People say they want to slow growth and development, but they don’t want new zoning or changes needed to do this. I hope we can address this in the comprehensive plan.”
Ecumenical Ministries helps 2,000 individuals a year from falling further behind. If it can help in one area, such as power bills, other issues including housing can fall into place, reducing the risk of homelessness. There are no homeless shelters, no place for the homeless to go, in Baldwin County, Dean said. Ecumenical Ministries sends homeless families to Family Promise, a temporary shelter where churches host families for a week and volunteers provide nutritious meals, tutoring help for kids and other necessities for the families.
Amanda and her children went from homeless to housed with Family Promise.
Growing up in a broken home in Fairhope, Amanda saw her parents who fought all of the time. Some days the abuse was so bad that her grandmother met her at the bus stop and took her away. Her parents divorced, but by age 16 Amanda was in her own abusive relationship. She had her first child when she turned 17, and another 11 months later. Wanting to keep her family together and give her kids a better life, she stayed.
“He gave me a concussion when I was eight months pregnant with our first child,” she said “He always apologized and said he would change. I believed him, but he just got worse.”
By the time she finally broke free, Amanda and her two babies were homeless. Her parents had disapproved of the marriage early on, so “bridges were burned.” Making $9 an hour at a daycare, housing in Baldwin County was unaffordable on her own. Friends and strangers took them in for weeks at a time until she found Family Promise during an internet search for homeless shelters.
“I was nervous about going into Family Promise but it turned my life around,” Amanda said. “I was in a dark place, but it got better.”
There are three Family Promise host congregations in Fairhope.
“We serve the situationally homeless and help families return to stability,” said Beth Huggins, executive director of Family Promise of Baldwin County. “Affordable housing is one of the biggest problems we have in Baldwin County. Families come to us because of family breakups, sickness, and loss of jobs. Families hide their homelessness and struggles because they don't want their children taken away from them. We try to keep their kids in the same schools and provide as much normal as we can.”
“Family Promise provided everything for us so we could save and get back on our feet,” Amanda said. “I walked into Fairhope Methodist Church and there was a mountain of diapers for us. One of the churches in Fairhope was the church I grew up in. My children and I slept in one of my Sunday School rooms.”
There is no charge for Family Promise, and the staff helps families get into permanent housing. But families must work while in the program and save money for apartment and utility deposits. In the program for five months, Amanda saved more than $1,000 for an apartment in Robertsdale. “That sounded like a lot of money, but I had $62 in my account after I paid for the deposits and move-in fees.” Her rent is income-based at $137 a month. It’s still a stretch, she said, especially if she misses days of work caring for a sick child.
Huggins said 80 percent of the families at Family Promise have single mothers as the heads of the household. Fifteen percent are two parents and a few are grandparents. Some come from living in cars or tents at state parks. One family lived in a motel for three years, paying $2,400 a month, but could never get ahead to save enough money for the first month’s rent and deposits they needed to move.
The shelter capacity for Family Promise is three families, or a total of 14 people. There are often 10 families on the waiting list and the phone rings all day with people looking for help. Huggins said the hardest part is turning away families who don’t have transportation because there is nowhere else for them to go in Baldwin County. “If you are a couple with no kids, or a single man or woman, all we can do is send you to Mobile or Pensacola.”
Families are motivated to get back on their feet, and 80 to 85 percent leave for permanent housing, Huggins said. However, housing is getting harder to find because rents and house prices are going up all over Baldwin County, not just in Fairhope.
Six miles outside the Fairhope city limits, Adam Pate is the pastor at Barnwell Baptist Church. Located in the 36532 zip code and the Fairhope schools feeder pattern, Pate said that while Barnwell feels far away from Fairhope, the issues of poverty, homelessness and survival are close by.
Homeless men and women often take shelter around the church, and overlooked elderly and Spanish-speaking communities live in trailer parks down the road. Pate’s congregation includes senior adults who can’t retire because Social Security isn't enough and they can’t afford their medications and housing. They work minimum wage jobs or clean condos and motel rooms. One of his older members who cleans condos can no longer drive, so another member takes her to work. “Without that job, she would be homeless,” Pate said.
He said the Hispanic community makes low incomes most of their kids have a hard time adjusting to school, he said. “Some don’t go to school at all because the parents are working and no one is at home making them go. We are trying to reach out to them and help.”
People are hurting physically and spiritually in our community, but no one sees them, Pate said. “We must tear down the walls and love all people. Just because they don't have the same social status or culture, or can’t afford a house in your neighborhood, doesn't make them any less your neighbor.”
Maureen sits on the porch of her trailer. Potted plants line the steps, birdhouses hang from trees, and her granddaughter and daughter live next door. Beyond the fence in her back yard is a field of horses, each one worth much more than her home. She moved here in 1993 when rent for a lot was $60 a month. The lot rent has increased to $310, plus utilities.
Marueen worked at Winn-Dixie, cleaned condos and was a substitute teacher. She worked the night shift from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. at the Beach Express toll bridge for 14 years. She enjoyed the job, but retired at age 62 when her body could no longer recover. There was more sleep, but no retirement plan or savings.
Maureen keeps her granddaughter on the nights her daughter works the nightshift. About 15 kids board the bus for Fairhope schools with her granddaughter every morning. Maureen and her daughter swap off on paying liability-only car insurance. “Car insurance is $80 a month, but I only have $20 in my account to get me through two more weeks,” Maureen said. “I can't pay it off this month.”
Maureen wondered aloud how people keep building expensive houses with high payments in Fairhope. She concluded they are doctors and lawyers making good money, or it’s family money. “We don't have family money,” she said. “I worked all of my life and saved some money, but that is already gone. I thought I was going to be fine.”
She thinks about selling her trailer and living somewhere cheaper, but there is nowhere else to go.
“I can’t afford to live in Fairhope, but I can’t afford to leave.”
*Some of the names have been changed.
If you want to help, donate to Family Promise or Ecumenical Ministries.
This is the third story in the five-part series, “A Tale of Two Cities.” Sunday is “A Tale of Two Histories.”
