Real estate tends to respond slowly to market changes — this, Wilmington Councilmember Vincent White, a former Wilmington Housing Authority chair and a lifelong resident of the city, knows.
“You could start building tomorrow, and by the time you were done in five years, you would still be behind the eight ball,” said White, who also has decades of experience working in commercial and residential real estate.
Echoing national trends, New Castle County is facing a significant housing shortage, with more than 18,000 additional units needed to house every low-income Delaware household. Healthy Communities Delaware, a private/public partnership nonprofit that specializes in supporting communities through the Vital Conditions for Health & Well-Being Framework, recognizes humane housing as a Vital Condition necessary for individuals to thrive and included the topic during its Equity Action Summit this past spring.
Exacerbating this issue in Wilmington, according to White, is that there hasn’t been a focused effort to utilize density effectively. There’s potential for mixed-use developments, like combining retail and housing, which was common in the past. Yet White said current policies and zoning don’t support such an exploration, and there is a lack of a favorable land use policy for housing construction overall.
Additionally, any discussion of today’s housing inequities in Wilmington and New Castle County must also include conversations about historic segregation, White said. Today’s neighborhoods reveal concentrations of low- to moderate-income Black and brown communities in the city, and are still victim to the policies preventing more humane housing from being developed or maintained in these tight-knit, multi-generational communities.
“What you have overall is a lack of home ownership, a lack of housing for a significant group of individuals,” White said.
Across the country, the housing market has reached a point where affordability is a significant concern for many people, said Sean O’Neill, a policy scientist at the University of Delaware and president of the Delaware Chapter of the American Planning Association.
According to O’Neill, this should raise questions about fundamentally changing the system, as it’s currently not working effectively across the country.
In places like Wilmington, O’Neill acknowledged the potential to build more housing, and to build for the local workforce that needs it. However, much development in the state remains focused on building single-family detached housing for retirees.
Given the housing market, renters may find themselves in a precarious situation. In Wilmington, community advocate Shyanne Miller is concerned about seeing complicated situations between renters and landlords arise, especially over substandard living conditions. Renters may feel compelled to accept these conditions due to limited options, leading to conflicts with landlords unwilling to invest in repairs.
“You don’t really want to risk being out on the street, so you just take what you can. But then you end up grappling with this landlord who does not want to put more money into fixing up the unit to make it livable,” Miller said.
Renters then face challenges when attempting to withhold rent as the state lacks clear guidelines and escrow options, Miller added, a problem that could be addressed through legislative efforts.
Similarly, Rachel Stucker, executive director of Housing Alliance Delaware, hopes to call attention to unjustified and predatory rent increases across many units in the state. Some rents have surged from $800 to $1,200 monthly, not due to increased expenses, but simply because the market allows it, she said. These practices, which exploit market conditions, are often seen as inevitable. However, that is not necessarily the case.
“I feel like a broken record saying this, but I’m just gonna keep saying it: We need more affordable rental housing,” Stucker said. “In order to do that, we need more funding for affordable rental housing development, and we need more land that can be used to develop that housing.”
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