More Job Training Could Help Affordable Housing Crisis on the Gulf Coast

Four years after Hurricane Katrina the Gulf Coast is deep in the middle of an affordable housing crisis. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports on the latest housing summit that’s attempting to tackle the problem.

This was the fourth year that Back Bay Mission held an affordable housing summit on the Gulf Coast. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi’s coastal counties have been in the throes of an affordable housing crisis driven by skyrocketing insurance rates and the loss of housing stock after the storm. Mike Highfield, an economics professor at Mississippi State says along with the damage from hurricane Katrina, there is not a good economic source of job creation on the coast, and that also contributes to the affordability issue,

“That leaves people in service industries where they make relatively low incomes, there is a lot of underemployed and discouraged workers in the area who don’t have an opportunity to make incomes where they can afford housing. So what we are dealing with now is a crisis where people need to be housed, but there is not housing available and part of that is due to the economic situation and also insurance costs on the coast.”

Ed Sivak, is director of the Mississippi Economic Policy Center,

“What we know here on the Gulf Coast is that it takes more to make ends meet then it does in other part of the state.”

Sivak says one solution to help solve the housing problem is to provide more workforce training so that people can afford the housing market and remain self sufficient,

“It is and making sure that training is targeted for occupations that are going to be in demand and create career pathways, so that people can earn higher wages as they increase their skills to move up the economic ladder.”

The Gulf Coast’s housing industry has been buoyed by billions of dollars in federal hurricane recovery funds in the past four years, but that money will eventually run out which may make self sufficiency all the more important.