My name is Caitlin Crowell, and I am a Community Researcher at Partnership for the Public Good. We have over three hundred partner organizations, many of whom work on housing affordability and stability, provide services to tenants and people facing homelessness, or are residents facing housing issues themselves.

In Erie County, skyrocketing rents and prices have transformed the housing environment from a challenge to a crisis. As a result, people are pushed into making difficult decisions between competing human needs. Families forego health care in favor of rent payments, or prioritize housing costs over food purchase.

And when people can’t afford housing, they often become homeless. On any given night in Erie County, approximately 1000 individuals are homeless, including many children. Some are under 5 years old, but many have to manage school. As the mom of a sixth grader and a former teacher, I try to imagine what it must be like for those kids, trying to get through the day on inadequate sleep and food, without knowing they have a secure place to spend the night.

More people are becoming homeless because renting in Erie County has become much pricier. Incomes remain low, but the cost of housing has gone up: currently, almost half of Erie County renter households can’t afford their lease payments-- they pay more than 30% of their income on rent. One quarter pays at least half their income on rent. There are fewer and fewer apartments even available as the short-term rental industry grows and houses come off the market.

Therefore, right now in Erie County we would need 75,000 additional affordable housing units to provide enough housing for our residents.

This is a problem for all of Erie County to address, because housing instability is infectious. As cities become unaffordable, pressures increase on suburbs, and then rural areas. Problems facing the very poor start to affect people in higher income brackets. The costs and pain of people without secure housing radiate outward to everyone.

Making housing affordable, therefore, is fiscally responsible. It is extremely expensive for the county to provide people with emergency shelter when they lose their homes. Proactively investing in affordable, permanent, stable housing for people treats the root problem rather than continuing to fund expensive temporary fixes.

Until now Erie County has not been able legally to spend money on affordable housing. In the process of working on short-term rental taxation, we learned that affordable housing is not a “county purpose” according to county law. This means that new revenue, like the short-term rental tax, cannot be allocated to affordable housing. This proposed law will correct this, and we urge the legislature to pass the legislation.

We are grateful to the legislature, with the leadership of Chairwoman April Baskin, for taking swift action to make this change.