Can’t Pay the Rent

Work hard, save consistently toward your goal, make a substantial down payment on a home you could afford; these steps were once common financial sense. Anyone watching the overextension of the middle class, however, has seen families be lulled into thinking the good times will never get worse. Many imagined that fancy financial finagling was just the new common sense, instead of what it always is, a risk and a foolhardy one for most. Yet many would-be homeowners used their hearts rather than their heads and borrowed heavily — often too heavily — for a home that became a burden rather than a safe base.

It is dismaying, to say the least, to learn the Island Affordable Housing Fund is likewise overextended. The housing fund was set up to raise money so that ordinary families here can stay despite extraordinary real estate prices. Yet it appears to have made the mistakes that led so many Americans to lose their dreams: it did not budget conservatively, it borrowed too heavily, and it did not deal early or honestly enough with financial problems.

This week rent was due for 85 year-round households who receive a subsidy from the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority. The subsidy for years has been supported by the fund, but this month it suddenly pulled out, perhaps for a month, more likely for good. Now landlords who signed contracts find they cannot be fulfilled, and renters are in limbo when they believed they were secure. The housing authority is scraping for another way to pay, but there are few ways to get such amounts on such short notice.

Landlords who depend on the income, having sacrificed high summer rents, may be forced to take less. Or residents may be forced out — to where? Trust in the program, which has been well-managed, already is damaged. So is trust among the affordable housing groups, where many collaborate on good will.

Despite this devastating move that might have been avoided with better management, the fund’s new director, T. Ewell Hopkins, should be congratulated for his professional and transparent approach to the mess he appears to have inherited. Affordable housing will continue to be a dynamic, critical concern on the Vineyard, one that demands a professional, critical approach. The issue is easy to support with our hearts, but this is a reminder that we must also face the tough questions we might rather push out of our heads, and sooner rather than later.