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Many families in Houma may struggle to fi nd a place to live at a rent they can afford. Especially when you consider this: according to U.S. Census Bureau data, one in six households in Terrebonne Parish paid a third of their earnings in rent each month between 2008 and 2013.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, families paying “more than 30 percent of their income for housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.”
The Bayou Cane Apartments off er working families more affordable housing options, but only half of the 82 total units that are offered to low-income households are at lowered rent.
That didn’t put a dent in the affordable housing dearth in Terrebonne Parish.
According to the 2013 U.S. Census, out of the estimated 10,039 rental units in Terrebonne Parish, over 40 percent were rented to families with children.
Of those families with children, roughly 44 percent made less than $50,000 in yearly household income.
The median yearly income for a family of four in the Houma-Thibodaux area is $58,700, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Anything less than $46,950 for a family of that size is considered low-income.
That is the threshold to qualify for a unit at Bayou Cane Apartments for that sized family.
Tomorrow’s ribbon-cutting for the Bayou Cane Apartment Complex represents a step toward more affordable housing options in Houma, but all of its discounted units are rented and demand is still high.
Bayou Cane Apartments’ discounted units are in extremely high demand: there are more than one-hundred people on the wait-list.
“I mean people, they call us on the phone and they’re like, ‘Is it up yet, is it up yet?’, I’m like, ‘no,’” said Lacey Shaw, community manager at Bayou Cane Apartments. “It’s huge, I mean we have a hundred people [on the list].”
The 82-unit apartment complex offers one and two-bedroom apartments, half of which are offered at a discount depending on a sliding income scale. The other half are considered “market-rate,” but rent is capped at what the Renaissance Neighborhood Development Corporation, the developer, says is 80 percent of the market rate. The market rate for a one-bedroom apartment at the complex is $799.
The entire complex is at 78 percent occupancy and there are only eight market-rate apartments left, Shaw said.
All of the discounted units are occupied.
Of the 41 one and two-bedrooms rented at discounted rates, the 33 with the long wait-list are reserved for families who earn no more than 60 percent of the median income level for the Houma- Thibodaux Metropolitan Area. For those who qualify, rent at that rate is $660 for a one-bedroom and $793 for a two-bedroom.
“The sixties, that is what our wait-list consists of,” Shaw said. “They are huge. They are needed in Houma… That is where a lot of people are falling.“
A little more than 36 percent of all households in Terrebonne Parish make less than 60 percent of the median household income, according to data averaging the years 2008 through 2013 by the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the same data, 1,300 families with children fall into this category.
The complex was built with $5.7 million in Community Development Block Grant funding awarded by Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government to the Renaissance Neighborhood Development Corporation, leveraged with additional private investors’ money and bank loans.
The Renaissance Neighborhood Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Volunteers of America, exists to provide quality rental housing that is affordable to working households in Southeast Louisiana.
The Bayou Cane Apartments are a profit endeavor. The private investors make a “return on investment” that Donna Betzer, director of marketing for Volunteers of America in New Orleans, avoided disclosing.
Though, she did say in a previous interview with The Times that the “RNDC, as the developer, will receive modest revenue which will be used to further the mission to develop additional workforce housing units.”
There are many more families in need of a low-cost place to raise their families, but Parish President Michel Claudet, who owns many rental properties himself, said the downturn in the oil industry may actually alleviate the issue.
“What’s happened is we’ve gone from a town where you couldn’t hardly find an apartment to rent, to now a town where we have vacancies because of the downturn in the economy,” Claudet said. According to him, there are a number of luxury apartments becoming vacant now that have never been before.
Despite the scale of the affordable housing problem in Terrebonne, Shaw may not believe that Bayou Cane itself will solve the land-lord’s market in Terrebonne, but she feels like she’s helping the people that live there.
“I think it is,” Shaw said. “I think it really is helping them.” •
