On the surface, workforce housing is a new synonym for “affordable housing.” Some say it was coined to reduce the cries of “not in my back yard” from residents and business owners afraid of poor families on financial assistance impacting their neighborhoods. Others feel it reflects a realization that a new sort of affordable housing is needed for individuals and families with middle-income jobs that nonetheless cannot afford to buy a home in Southern California. Creators of “workforce housing” typically intend it be virtually identical to any other market-rate housing one might encounter in the region, but use subsidies to make the housing affordable for workers such as nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers.

           

In reality, workforce housing is not a new concept at all. One finds examples of workforce housing in many historical periods, including employer-supported housing and housing developments that emerge more organically in the vicinity of specific industries. Perhaps the most apparent example of the former kind of workforce housing is with reference to the military. This is not focusing so much on military camps or barracks that provide shelter for soldiers on maneuvers, but the military housing communities one might find near a naval station, airfield, or army base. These-large scale developments of workforce housing provide not only shelter, but facilities such as parks, grocery stores, and even movie theaters and other amenities for military personnel and their families. This is often one of the greatest retention tools for military personnel, since these neighborhoods are made affordable.

           

During the emergence of the industrial age, many new communities throughout the world were developed around single companies. Some of these “company towns” were based upon extraction (for instance, oil, coal, or lumber), while others were created around factories. As in the case of military housing, these company towns included many of the same community amenities that one would find in any typical town. In fact, some of these communities later grew into more traditional cities with diverse economies, as in the case of Gary, Indiana (originally linked to U.S. Steel) and Hershey, Pennsylvania.

 

A range of factors shaped the development of these employer-specific workforce housing communities, including the limited transit options of the early industrial age, force protection of military personnel both domestically and abroad, or the location of some industries far from existing population centers. A common thread was that these communities were oriented toward providing affordable housing, from army-enlisted families in Hawaii to the miners of Coalwood, West Virginia.

 

This goal is germane to any discussion of contemporary workforce housing in Southern California. A prime example of an employer in the region responding to present-day challenges of middle-income ownership is the public university system of California.  Many campuses within the University of California and California State University systems provide affordable faculty housing in response to the high cost of living in the state. The housing is often available for university faculty in both lease and ownership arrangements at below market value, in and around the campus. Even with subsidies, however, a new UC Irvine professor can purchase at most a two-bedroom attached condominium in the UC Irvine housing community in Orange County. By comparison, without any such assistance, a new University of Michigan faculty member making a comparable salary can live in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home near their campus. Mo Tidemanis, Foundation Director of Real Estate for California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), speaks for universities across the state when concluding that “The housing question is a serious issue for faculty retention and recruitment when trying to draw quality faculty from across the nation.”

 

Indeed, this issue is particularly pertinent for CSULB, where the university currently has no subsidized faculty housing. Because of limitations placed on campus expansion, the university must look beyond its current boundaries to develop new housing options. In comparison, a shortage of developable land is not an issue for three of our four city hospitals: St. Mary’s, Memorial and Veterans’ Hospital all have available land within their respective medical campuses.  Due to demographic shifts in the urban areas of Los Angeles, Long Beach Unified School District has been experiencing reduction in student population despite growth in overall population within its borders.  LBUSD might soon have surplus property as schools close due to smaller student bodies.  Leveraging their own land they can develop workforce housing for nurses, medical technicians, administrators, and other staff. In doing so, they can create an incentive that few similar institutions can match.

 

Another opportunity for a number of our city’s largest employers to develop workforce housing for their employees emerges from the unique role of these institutions. Many of them, including Long Beach City College and CSULB, have non-profit (501c3) foundations that provide individuals (including developers) the opportunity to receive a tax deduction when donating to the institutions. In the current real estate market, in which there is a growing availability of new housing units, this provides the possibility for developers to unload housing units, donating or discounting them to these non-profit foundations.

 

Left to the vagaries of the market, it seems unlikely that developers will create affordable housing on a sufficient scale to maintain a strong middle class in Southern California. However, there are ways for some of our larger employers to develop workforce housing that could help alleviate this significant challenge.

Provided is another study through LAUSD about declining Los Angeles Area student populations.