What is it like to raise a family when you have no home?
- When you get $4 or $5, $6 above minimum wage
and you still can't find an affordable place to live,
something is wrong.
- Hmm?
No. - No?
- No one in America should have to work
40 hours a week and not be able to afford to live in the place
that they work.
Yay! [Cheers]
We are the orphans of the American Dream.
I'm in ZIP code 35810 in Huntsville, Alabama.
The U.S.' cheapest city from 2021 to 2022.
Rent here surged 21% since the pandemic began.
With companies at the center of the billion-dollar arms industry based
here, aerospace and technology are fueling Rocket City's hot jobs market,
pumping in out-of-state residents.
It's one of the reasons why this affordable place isn't cheap enough for so many.
- This is my cabinet.
- Oh OK, so a lot of canned goods. I see a lot of beans.
Chef Boyardee. Obviously, you have four kids.
- Yeah. [Laughs]
Bethany Simmons is giving me a tour of New Futures,
the homeless shelter where she lives with her husband, Houston,
and their four children:
Adrian, Zachary, Dalton
and 8-month-old Ruby.
That's fair. That's fair. I was trying to get you to grab my finger.
How does it feel to be making more money than you've made in your entire life
and yet find yourself without housing?
It's exciting to make money, but it's also really frustrating
at the same time, just because all of the people
that make less than I do, where are they living at?
And if you can't afford to live in the city that you work in,
then you won't be staying there to work for very much longer.
Bethany is originally from Nashville, Tennessee,
which is two hours north of Huntsville.
Rocketing housing costs priced her out of her hometown.
Rent there rose 18% in the first quarter of 2020.
So she and her family moved to Huntsville last November,
hoping for higher wages, cheaper living and economic stability.
- Cost of living was probably the biggest driving factor
for, for deciding where we should go because we want to be able
to live somewhere that's going to be sustainable in the long run.
Nashville is outgrowing its citizens at this point.
They're drawing in so much, so much business and so much commerce
and it's great for a city to grow, but you can't push out the residents
that you already have to make room for more growth.
That doesn't- that seems counterintuitive.
Right now, there's not a single county, metro area or state in the U.S.
where a minimum-wage earner can afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Huntsville's rank as the cheapest city is based on comparisons
of the percentage of median household income that goes toward lodging.
- This is the car that got us all here.
As you can see, there is not a lot of space for six people in there.
And you see the hatch is small.
So we didn't get to bring a whole bunch of stuff with us.
- And also the thought of six people maybe having to live in here.
Yeah.
How have you been able to afford things like gas at this time?
Well, I started working within two weeks of landing here.
Other residents would pay me to, like, do their chores.
I think my first two weeks here, I think I made like maybe 60 or 70 bucks?
Not a whole lot, but enough to put gas in the car.
Bethany's family was one night away from being forced to live in their SUV
when they arrived in Huntsville.
We had nothing left.
What little we did have quickly depleted while we were staying in hotels
and also trying to feed ourselves.
After I paid the hotel bill, I had $3 left
the day that New Futures called me back.
In a city where the cost of living is 5.1% lower than the national average,
Huntsville saw a 1.3% increase last year.
Housing costs are skyrocketing nationwide.
But this city of 215,000
people has some of the country's steepest increases nationally.
Huntsville's housing crisis isn't a job crisis.
In March, the state had a less than 3% unemployment rate,
which was lower than the national rate.
Alabama's and the nation's housing emergency
are the result of a housing supply shortage.
But the shortage isn't accidental.
It's the result of years of deliberate economic policies
doing things like limiting the types of homes
that can be constructed, and where they can be built.
These exclusionary laws were always intended to disproportionately
affect people of color and the lowest wage earners.
- I don't qualify to rent a place based on my income.
When you go to an apartment, they require you to make three times
the income and to have no evictions,
good background check and over a 570 credit score — on some places.
Other places are more strict.
A lot of these places, they require you to make three times the rent.
And if it's, like, $1,100, say,
even if you make 2.7, they still won't qualify you.
- How much were you making? 2.7.
Carmen Gallegos moved into
the RiahRose Home for Children
with her young son a week ago.
This shelter serves only pregnant women and single mothers.
Carmen moved from Utah a year ago to join a prophetic church here.
Initially, she signed a short-term lease, but found her financial
expectations weren't matching her reality.
The lease was for $875
and then it rocked up to it changing every month.
I mean, one month it was like $975,
the second month it was like $990
and then the third month it was like $1,100.
And so they were including, like, these little charges, like pest control
fees, trash fees, water fees,
things that I didn't know initially
that they didn't charge me for the first month.
So to me, it just seemed like they were trying
to find things to charge me for.
- What's the thing that most women need when they come here that they don't have?
Oh, you know what? Underwear.
Carolyn Jackson birthed RiahRose
along with her husband because they wanted to give back.
Today, I watched the retired educator accept one new mother seeking shelter
and turn down another because by then she had no more rooms available.
- And I do apologize for the refrigerator making the noise.
We need a refrigerator. [Laughs]
- What do you make sure to have in each living space? - OK.
Everyone that comes in is going to receive sheets and blankets.
They're also going to receive a mattress cover
to go on their bed and pillows and pillow covers.
We also have other items, let's see here, such as toothbrush,
toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant.
Just a whole bag of stuff.
We have more people coming in.
In fact, about, I'd say, 60% of the people
who come to RiahRose at this time are from out of state.
When I first met you and I told you that I was doing this story
on what it's like to be homeless in the cheapest city in the nation,
you laughed, [Laughs]
and I'm wondering why you laughed?
Well, I don't think that, that Huntsville is the cheapest city in the nation.
Huntsville's per capita income is less than $37,000.
Affordable rent for that is less than $1,000 monthly.
But because the city's rent average is more than that,
$73 a month could be the difference between housing and homelessness.
Sorry, excuse me.
- What's it like being a stay-at-home parent in a transitional housing facility?
It is exhausting,
to say the least.
It is...
it's fine. You know, we have peace here.
The kids play, they enjoy it here.
They have more structure
than they've had for quite a while actually.
[Crying] - Aw, are you tired?
Yes!
Good job, Adrian!
Oh, oh no. [Laughs]
Houston and Bethany trade off employment based on who can earn more.
In the last two weeks, Bethany's fast-food earnings increased
from her starting wage of $12.10 an hour to $14,
both of which are much more than the state's $7.25 minimum wage.
And Bethany expects to receive another raise now that she's on a management track.
- How has this experience affected the relationship between the two of you?
It has made it better.
- I agree. I think that we've become a lot
closer since we got here because we've had an opportunity
to sit back, just the two of us, and put together a plan.
OK, what should we do? What do we need to do?
You know, and we have rules here that we have to follow.
But other than following the rules, you know, this is not something,
nobody's going to knock on your door tomorrow and say,
"OK, you got to get out."
Bethany and Houston
have spent much of their marriage dealing with housing insecurity.
When was the last time you all had your names on a lease?
When Adrian was 4, we rented a little small trailer
in, like, one of the worst trailer parks ever.
The trailer was a 1950s model.
It was 10 feet wide.
It was 40 feet long, so 400 square feet.
We were paying $900 a month.
- This is the most room we've ever had
to cohabitate.
You know, the children have their own room, everything else.
When staying with her family, we were all crammed into one room
about half the size, all four of us.
Of the many challenges these parents face raising their family in a shelter,
they say sharing a communal kitchen and raising their children
in such close proximity to others are two of the most difficult.
- I've had to explain that to Adrian a few times.
Well, even if so-and-so
does like to run up and down the hallways with their tablet,
we're not going to do that because Mommy doesn't allow that.
So I think the other kids have also kind of looked at what other kids are doing.
Oh, well they do this?
Well, sorry, they do that, but we, we don't do that.
New Futures and RiahRose are two of at least
five homeless shelters in Huntsville.
The city anticipates a rise in its homeless population.
And Governor Kay Ivey pledged $2.8 million last October
to address the issue statewide.
Half a million of those funds is dedicated to Huntsville.
Bethany and her family were able to move into their own home
because they received a coveted housing voucher subsidizing rent.
It came from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program,
which is funded through federal COVID relief bills.
The aid required her to find a place in no more than 60 days.
- It's not extravagant.
It's not luxurious, but it is an opportunity to get
on our own feet and have our own space
and raise our kids how we see fit.
It's been years since I've had to think about interior design.
What color do I want my living room?
Like, these are things that I haven't had to think about in a long time.
The amount of peace that this has brought me
has been phenomenal.
Like, I have become a different person since moving.
Stress has a way of unwinding you
I mean, just down to your core.
The voucher has made this possible, but not easy.
The rate fluctuates based on income.
If Bethany makes more, she'll pay a larger portion of the housing cost.
Right now, her out-of-pocket cost is a third of the rent.
She can have this assistance for life and it's not limited
to use in subsidized housing projects.
But the difficulty comes in finding a landlord willing to accept it as payment.
Many won't.
- It's nice to be able to have yourself
financially secure to where when my kids ask me for something,
"OK, baby. I can go get it."
And I don't have to worry about, OK, what am I gonna not buy
so I can buy Adrian's shoes?
- I finally get to live in an actual house that is ours.
I've never had a house to ourselves.
- Can a city truly be cheap or inexpensive if some people can't afford housing?
America as a whole, it has a housing problem.
And the housing problem is not going away.
And ignoring it is not making it go away.
More affordable housing needs to be built.
And right now, even with opening up shelters, there's a lot of people
who want to say, oh, well, not in my backyard —
I don't want a shelter next to me or I don't want a shelter next to me.
Where exactly do you think you're going to put people?
It's got to be next to somebody.
- I heard you're 8 months old now.
How's that going?
That's, that's about how I thought.
Who do they say that she looks like more?
Because to me, she looks like...