Energy assistance requests increase

Sarah Moses
Cumberland Times-News

Sat, May 17 2008

— OAKLAND - An increase in waiting lists for affordable housing and energy and housing assistance has Garrett County officials searching for a cause.
"There's been a significant increase in the waiting list in property that we own that Garrettland manages for us," Duane Yoder, director of the Garrett County Community Action Committee, said. "We've had a number of increases in the rental allowance program."
Yoder said that while he just recently noticed this trend, he does not yet have an explanation for it. He said that some of the waiting lists for the affordable housing and rental allowance programs have doubled and he's not sure what triggered this change.
Just six months ago, he was not sure if there was a significant need for additional housing units in the county, as waiting lists were small and some of the lower-income developments had vacancies. Now, Yoder said, there are no vacancies, and those developments that had space now have waiting lists of about 10 people.
Yoder said that his agency has helped to put 3,000 households on energy assistance, about 400 more than previous years.
"There is kind of an obvious answer there," Yoder said. "Energy prices are going up."
However, the other areas remain something that both community action and economic development officials are researching.
Jim Hinebaugh, director of economic development for Garrett County, said that he is unsure what exactly sparked this recent change. He said that once again, unemployment is down, with January showing at 5.5 percent compared to 6.4 percent the year before.
Yoder said that he didn't feel that the cost of housing in the area had gone up drastically in the last year to justify the change, though there is always the possibility that leases had come up for renewal, requiring increased rent each month.
Inflation on the basic necessities might be the reason that community action is seeing these increases, he said.
"Probably one thing that has gone up is the cost of living outside of housing, and our wages haven't really gone up in accordance with the inflation," Yoder said. "Low-income people always get hit harder by inflation than anyone, and the inflations are on the essentials."
This is making it more difficult for people to not only pay rent, but also own a home, as some families have faced foreclosure or sold rather than continuing to pay their mortgage.
In the past, community action has worked with lending groups to help the families keep their homes, but he said that more and more mortgages are being bought up by large, national lenders that are not as willing to work with them.
According to John Nelson, county director of planning and land development, his department is seeing fewer building permits for new homes as well. He said that last year's totals were down, and he expects that the first quarter of 2008 would show the same thing.
That, Yoder said, is another problem, as construction has long been one of the better-paying jobs in the area.
"You can take those trends and say, logically, that's part of the reason," Hinebaugh said. "Strange as it sounds, I think a lot of the things that are happening nationally haven't filtered down to us yet or had the same relevance as other places. ... It begs for explanation. My gut feeling is it's going to be hard to explain."
Contact Sarah Moses at smoses@times-news.com.