To live and work in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut is a privilege and a challenge. Beauty abounds — with rolling hills, open space, and fresh waterways. A serene place to call home. To raise a family. To grow old. But, for many, actually finding an “affordable” residence is quite a challenge. This idyllic American Dream, quite frankly, is out of reach for many working families. The viability of our community is at risk.
We prefer to call the lack of affordable housing a serious lack of workforce family housing. Many of our Sharon Hospital staff find it difficult to live in our community. Of our 415 full-, part-time and per diem employees, 52 percent live in Connecticut, 44 percent live in New York, 2.3 percent live in Massachusetts, and 1.7 percent commute from other states. More than 30 of our hospital team members commute 25 miles or more and over a dozen commute a distance of 50 miles or greater.
Many of our younger hospital employees are finding it increasingly difficult to find places of their own within our immediate neighboring towns; often residing with parents, friends or other family members. The trend of multi-generational living from years past is becoming more and more prevalent.
As the age of our population increases, so too does our lack of family workforce housing. In Sharon alone, the median sale price of a single family home doubled from 2000 to 2006. And, as of June 1, 2015, more than two-thirds of recent home sales in Sharon in the past year were sold to individuals with out-of-town permanent addresses or non-traditional, second homeowners who do not utilize local services on a routine basis. The median sales value of these homes was $616,097. For those earning the median household income of $70,877 in Litchfield County, a home in our area is simply out of reach.
After speaking with “Kate”, a young nurse at Sharon Hospital, I was able to confirm the difficulty and frustration — often heartache — that touches some of our Sharon Hospital family members. The need for housing is real. Kate is a single parent. Starting a career. Looking for local daycare. Finishing her education. Striving to find a place to call home that is a short commute to the hospital. Kate has searched for months and has resigned to living with her parents for the foreseeable future. She would love nothing more than to have a home to call her own and raise her children.
Affordable housing for working adults like Kate, whether a single family home, a duplex, condominium, or apartment, is desperately needed for many members of our area’s current workforce (hospital staff, teachers, bank tellers, emergency service volunteers, firefighters and more). This challenge exists when it comes to recruiting new staff and young healthcare providers to our community as well.
There are several places within our service area that offer affordable housing. We applaud those community members who have come together to create places throughout Litchfield County. The most recent additions have been created by The Sharon Housing Trust with 12 additional units completed in 2014. There are also several single family dwellings being constructed currently in our area. But, the need is so much greater. There simply is not enough workforce family housing, period.
As a community, we have a desperate challenge facing us. We must come together to create workforce family housing for a viable future. For our community to grow and thrive, we need a true collaborative team effort; a housing team made up of town leaders, employers, developers and community members. We need out-of-the-box ideas and collaboration. We must work together to find suitable land to build suitable housing that will offer our current working generation and their children a place they can afford — a place to call home.
Jill Groody Musselman was formerly in communications at Sharon Hospital.
