Housing - A Basic Need Not Met in our Community

Do you remember Maslow and his "Theory on Hierarchy of Needs"?  It has been about 40 years since I took the basic psychology class that taught me about Maslow. Recently those lessons are illustrated close to home, in relation to available housing.  Safety is a need that must be satisfied before humans can move on to love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.  From a practical sense, a big part of safety is housing.  Our home is the place helping to meet people's basic physiological needs and is necessary to maintain our lives.  Housing meets not only the sheltering-related needs but also physiological needs. During the last two years, we've seen groups increase their efforts to provide housing to the homeless, including Children's Cabinet, Nevada Youth Empowerment Project, and Volunteers of America, but the costs are staggering.  Fortunately, attention to this need has dramatically increased in the last year.  Four weeks ago I wrote about a HUD sponsored seminar held in Reno that focused on the need for increasing housing in our community.  We have some low-cost and subsidized housing, but the arrangements to build this housing are frequently short-term (15 years or so), and then the owners can move the rents up to market rate. We are losing more affordable housing than we are creating.  Even people who can secure vouchers to help them get safe housing, which will help them go to school and get better-paying jobs, can't find housing that is affordable because of increasing rents.  As the rents go up, people are evicted, and HUD reports that 70% of those evicted in our community are single mothers with kids.  When we began our work on You'N-I, "Youth Network Initiative" to determine, and implement, measures to help struggling youth, many of whom are experiencing homelessness, housing was identified a crucial need.  But, this is the need that is the hardest to satisfy, because of the cost.  The first tendency is to think that a person should go to school or get a job, but without being safe, and having no place to call home, a significant number of young people and older people as well, simply cannot advance. Press coverage about the critical need for housing is increasing in the national news and our local newspapers. I urge you to take these issues seriously.  It will take all of us working together to improve the situation. We need to make housing available for our "at risk" residents so that they will be in a better position to move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At the Community Foundation of Western Nevada, we're working with more and more people who are concerned about the lack of available, affordable housing in our communities.  Through our community leadership activities, The Community Foundation will do what we can to help.  If you would like to join the Community Foundation in our work, whether through charitable giving or in community leadership, please give me a call at 775-333-5499. Chris Askin, President, and CEO 775-762-1932 Connecting people who care with causes that matter.