#SeaHomeless answers: How much does lack of affordable housing contribute to homelessness? Readers back in July chose this question to be answered with a story

Kenyatta Webb walks through the True Hope Village on East Yesler Way where he has lived with his 14-year-old son, Milchia, for the past two months, Oct. 28, 2018. Kenyatta Webb walks through the True Hope Village on East Yesler Way where he has lived with his 14-year-old son, Milchia, for the past two months, Oct. 28, 2018. Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close #SeaHomeless answers: How much does lack of affordable housing contribute to homelessness? 1 / 38 Back to Gallery

This story is in response to a reader-submitted and reader-selected question about homelessness in Seattle. The question was one of many submitted by readers as part of a partnership with several Seattle news outlets. For more from our #SeaHomeless coverage this past summer, please click here.

Seattle's homelessness crisis has many causes, and weighing how much each of those impacts the situation day-to-day is a tough nut to crack.

But it's what we set out to do in response to Rick Davis's question submitted back in July as part of a call-out for questions from readers on homelessness in Seattle. Ultimately, his question was voted the winner to be answered with a story.

Davis asked: "To what degree is 'lack of affordable housing' adding to (the) homeless count? What percentage of homeless would be buying or renting if prices (were) cut in half?"

He lives on the Eastside, but commutes to the city regularly and spent many years living in Seattle, and told SeattlePI that he sees the ever-increasing homelessness as a "blemish on the city," and wondered if the lack of affordable housing -- often noted as a major component in keeping people from winding up homeless or getting them off the streets -- is really such a large factor.

Is the high home value in Seattle really driving homelessness? If the prices were cut in half, would some of those people be able to "get in the game?" Davis wondered.

"It appears that what's on the front of a lot of policymakers' minds and a lot of vocal people, is that affordable housing is a major driver," Davis said.

RELATED: Auditor's report: Seattle still short on homeless shelter beds

Davis speculated that affordable housing -- or a lack thereof -- wasn't the factor. Instead, he believed that failings by providers and governments to adequately address mental health and addiction issues was the major driver of homelessness.

But both anecdotes and data indicate that a lack of affordable housing is, in fact, a major driver of homelessness.

In the 2018 Count Us In tally, which found 12,112 people experiencing homelessness in King County, roughly 80 percent of people surveyed who were homeless on that night said more affordable housing and rental assistance would be key to ending their homelessness.

Almost everyone surveyed -- 98 percent -- said they would move into safe, affordable housing if it were offered to them.

Robert and Ashley Bowen agreed. The couple has been living in the Georgetown tiny house village for several months, unable to cobble together enough money to move into a market-rate apartment, and far down a long waiting list for subsidized housing.

Ashley had been waiting months for the Social Security Administration to approve her application for full disability (she can't work) and Robert, who said he now works part-time, calculated that even if he got on full-time at the nearby Boeing factory in a skilled labor job, he still would struggle to earn enough to get them into anything close to genuine market-rate rents.

Robert described affordable housing as a "huge" factor in whether or not he and others remained in camps or shelters, or could make it on their own.

Affordable housing is generally defined as housing that doesn't exceed 30 percent of the residents' income. Subsidized housing is often set at the same level, thus varying the amount of the subsidy based on what the tenant earns (once upon a time, rents were limited to 20 percent of income, then raised to 25 percent in 1969 and finally, to 30 percent, in 1981).

For a household earning $100,000 per year, an "affordable" rent or mortgage payment would be about $2,500 per month. But for many people experiencing homelessness, that figure is much, much lower -- in some cases, zero.

RELATED: On the streets for years: Chronic homelessness in Seattle, everywhere, hard to escape

Of all the rentals in the Seattle metropolitan area, about 12.6 percent are subsidized, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A Seattle Times analysis of that data found that Seattle ranked 19th out of the top 25 U.S. metros for amount of subsidized housing.

In King County, where the median overall rent is up to $2,432, per Zillow, roughly a third of all households were cost-burdened in 2017, meaning they paid more than 30 percent of household income in rent or mortgage payments, according to the King County Housing Affordability Task Force. Of the more than 290,000 households that were cost burdened, 101,000 of them were in the lowest income bracket -- earning between 0 and 30 percent of area median income.

Multiple programs -- local, state and federal -- provide subsidized housing in the Seattle area, but the amount available isn't keeping up with demand; it's actually decreased, according to Kira Zylstra, acting director of All Home King County.

"Particularly in Seattle, (in) King County housing is just a significant gap," Zylstra said.

King County Housing Authority (KCHA) manages about 3,500 heavily subsidized units in the county, along with managing another roughly 12,000 Housing Choice program vouchers (also known as Section 8, a federal program that provides a rental subsidy to low-income families), according to Mike Reilly, deputy director for the housing authority.

Typically, KCHA sees about 485 applications per month for the local subsidized housing program, but that figure has been around 532 per month since March, an indicator of increasing need, Reilly said. As of mid-November, the department had more than 15,000 people on waitlists for housing.

On the Housing Choice program, KCHA periodically opens up the waitlist for more applications. At the last opening, a two-week period in 2017, they received more than 19,000 applications, Reilly said.

"At the end of the day, we're oversubscribed on all of our programs (and) we can only make room when people leave," said Kristy Johnson, senior director of homeless housing for KCHA. "Quite frankly, people are not leaving at the rate they used to leave because rents continue to escalate in the community."

If the cost of housing were cut in half -- rents more than anything -- it would have a "huge impact," Zylstra added, getting to the other part of Davis's question. She pointed to the growing body of research that correlates rising rents with growing homelessness.

A report from Zillow in 2017 continued along the same thread: The more rents rise, the more people are pushed beyond the edge of affordability and into homelessness.

But other resources need to be available, too, Zylstra said.

Efforts need to focus on an array of resources to help people not only when they lose their housing, but also when they are at risk of losing it.

"Other systems of care need to happen. We can't just focus on behavioral health or just focus on housing," Zylstra said. "Health and well being have a lot to do with having a safe place to be at night."

She said the region faces a shortage of behavioral health services, too.

Reilly agreed that housing also needs to include support for people who have mental health or addiction issues, and many people living on the street have experienced at least some level of trauma.

Mark Putnam, former director of All Home and currently the executive director of the YMCA's Accelerator program, said the housing issue is more about inequity. Rising rents and stagnating wages inevitably make it harder for lower income earners to secure housing.

Putnam pointed to a decline in funding for affordable housing from the federal government and the failure of wages to keep up with the cost of living as factors driving the housing crisis.

"Unfortunately, this is the conversation we've been having for a long time," Putnam said. "The (federal government) decided in the '80s that it was no longer its responsibility to create enough housing for everybody who needed it. And it's become something that's just very difficult to get. If you're eligible for Section 8, get in line and in five years your name might come up."

Davis, who asked the question, told SeattlePI that he thought mental health and addiction issues were larger factors behind homelessness than housing, specifically: "the way we deal with people who don't choose to live a normal lifestyle."

The current crisis of opioid addiction could certainly be considered, but no similar surge in homelessness was recorded during the crack/cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, Putnam said.

Indeed, statistics show the growing gap between wage growth and housing costs. The national median hourly wage has barely ticked upward since the 1970s -- from $16.74 in 1973 to $17.86 in 2016 (in 2016 dollars), according to the Economic Policy Institute. In roughly the same time frame, the U.S. median rent has more than doubled -- from $695 in 1970 to $1,595 in 2018 (all adjusted to 2018 dollars), according to U.S. Census and Zillow figures.

"I think the biggest cause is income inequality," Putnam said. "We've never had this level of income inequality before. And society is being built around the wages of the middle and upper classes here."

Kenyatta Webb, who has been living at True Hope Village at 18th Avenue and East Yesler Way since Sept. 5, has held jobs for most of his adult life, at times looking confidently middle class. The 41-year-old had worked variously as a mechanic, a floor buffer and other jobs since he was a teenager, and, when cluster headaches started setting in a few years ago, he and his son lived in a four-bedroom house. But the debilitating headaches forced Webb to start calling in sick and soon he lost his job.

Webb is on multiple waitlists for housing, and his chances are improved by the fact that he has his 14-year-old son living with him, but it's still a long waiting game.

"It's hard," Webb said in a recent interview.

Like Ashley and Robert Bowen, Webb agreed that if housing were offered for free or nearly so, he would take it. But keeping it, at any price, would require him finding work that gave him the necessary flexibility to deal with his unpredictable headaches.

Robert Bowen suggested that the city or county create 5,000 units of housing and simply move in all the people who are homeless and don't want to be. For their part, county officials want to create more housing; they simply don't have the resources.

"The simple answer is, we need more dollars for more units," Reilly said.

Big thanks to our partners — The Evergrey, GeekWire, Crosscut, Real Change, Patch, ParentMap, and KUOW for working with us on this project; to Crosscut for coordinating #SeaHomeless Day on July 19; to Hearken for letting us use their tool for this collaborative local project; and to all of you for thinking and caring about your city.

Senior editor Daniel DeMay can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.