Across the state, young people are entering adulthood with the hope of building their lives. Some recently celebrated the achievement of graduating from college, others started work right after high school or have been out of school for a while. But all face the challenge of finding a place to live in a state where there is a lack of affordable housing at every price point.
With the cost of living rising exponentially and the minimum wage remaining stagnant, young West Virginians are struggling to find housing. It now takes a minimum wage worker an average of 70 hours per week — essentially two full-time jobs — to afford a one-bedroom apartment in West Virginia.
Some young West Virginians are struggling to meet their basic needs. They are asking elected officials to give them more tenants’ rights, to invest in policies that lower the cost of living and to help young people become homeowners.
Here are some of their stories.
More protections for renters
Walking into his first apartment tour in Charleston, Stefan Pfaff felt defeated. The monthly rent on Zillow had said $725 plus electric, a perfect fit under his budget. Yet, as the landlord spoke of more hidden fees — parking, maintenance, ones he couldn’t keep up with — it became apparent that Pfaff could not afford the place.
“I finished the tour,” he said, “but I felt lied to after that.”
As he visited more apartments, it became clear to him that his options were limited. One was dirty and seemed smaller than the photos online. Another apartment he toured had an overwhelming stench of smoke, among a slew of other problems.
The recent West Virginia University graduate had gotten a job right out of college as a GIS Technician at the West Virginia Department of Transportation. Pfaff said he had less than two weeks to find housing before his job started.
“I remember walking in,” Pfaff said. “There were no smoke detectors. There was the wiring coming from the ceiling.”
When he finally toured the apartment he ended up with, he said it blew him away because it was clean. Pfaff said he doesn’t plan to stay in Charleston long term, but is open to moving somewhere else in West Virginia.
“There’s just not a lot of opportunity for economic advancement,” he said.
The Charleston apartment isn’t his first in the Mountain State either. During his college career, he had some of the same problems in Morgantown. Old, run-down buildings that had little oversight overflowed the market.
Pfaff said there needs to be more protection for renters in West Virginia. Specifically, he wants rent control where landlords would not be able to raise the rent beyond a set amount from year to year.
He said that he is already paying about 40% of his income for rent alone. If rent goes up, he won’t be able to afford it.
Pfaff said it “was either take the clean apartment for a little bit more or compromise for one of the other apartments and put my health at risk.”
Encourage first-time home buyers
After months of trying to find the perfect house, Jessica Hernandez and her husband still come home to their small, one-bedroom apartment.
“We’re focused on looking for houses in town because we both work in town, and that’s proven really difficult,” she said.
The Pittsburgh natives moved to Morgantown after relocating to Florida for a few years. Moving to West Virginia for the couple meant shopping online for the space they have and signing a lease before they physically saw it.
“That was actually really complicated,” Hernandez said.
She said communicating with the realty group that owned the apartment complex was a nightmare. Coordinating times to pick up keys and making sure the apartment was unlocked when the couple arrived took almost two weeks.
Now, as they look for a bigger place, the couple is realizing how hard it is to be homeowners — especially in a college town.
“You’re buying it after a bunch of people have rented it out,” she said. “It’s usually not going to be nice quality.”
The WVU project specialist and her husband, an electrician, have a budget between $150,000 and 200,000, yet they are finding it difficult to buy a property in that range that doesn’t need massive repairs.
“Being a first-time homebuyer has challenges in itself,” she said.
Many of the properties they looked at had water damage, or the floors were coming apart. Hernandez said the owners had done the bare minimum to maintain these places.
As a veteran, her husband qualifies for a loan guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but to get it, the house they buy has to meet specific property quality standards for safety, structural soundness and sanitation.
Originally, the couple wanted land to build a house, but after figuring out how much that would cost, they decided to buy a smaller property with a house that is already built.
Hernandez said her goal is to build a life in Morgantown so the couple can set down roots.
“Now we’ve sort of realized that building equity is more important to get us there because of how expensive having a lot of property is,” she said.
Hernandez would like to see elected officials incentivize first-time home buyers with tax credits, grants or down payments to make it easier. She believes that more people in their early twenties would be buying houses if they had these programs in place.
Lawmakers need to “get a grip on” cost of living
Shane Quinn and his girlfriend make dinner in their one-bedroom apartment’s tiny kitchen every night. The problem: only one of them can fit in the room at a time. The couple pays almost $1,000 in rent per month.
Since graduating in May, the Huntington accountant and Applebee’s server have been searching for a bigger place to live.
“We’ve been trying to move out, but you know the rent prices have just gotten so ridiculous in the area,” he said. “I mean, just insanely high.”
When they finally found a place in their price range, they were ecstatic. The three-bedroom house was owned by a friend’s parents, and they planned to live with the friend and split the rent three ways.
“As we were moving in, we were finding holes in the walls,” Quinn said. “We found rat poison pellets all over the basement. We found water seeping through the foundation.”
The couple had been told during their tour that the house would look “brand new,” and everything would be cleaned up.
But the house was only ready a day before they were moving in, and the landlords hadn’t done the promised work. They had to move back into their one-bedroom apartment and start looking again.
“The whole reason I even went to college was so I could afford a house,” he said.
Quinn’s five-year plan hinges on being able to purchase a house to grow his family. He said the goalpost keeps moving further away from that possibility.
“Under the current political climate, under the current way things are going, I will be very shocked if, in five years, I have a house and a family,” he said.
Quinn believes that people need to vote for policies and politicians who work to lower the cost of living. He said people like him with no generational wealth to fall back on are struggling to afford basic necessities.
“I feel like if legislators don’t get a grip on that, people are just going to move out,” Quinn said.
Although he splits bills with his girlfriend, the rising cost of living has caused their utility bills to climb, so the couple lives paycheck-to-paycheck.
Quinn said he earned a degree so he could get out of poverty and build a life, but he doesn’t know if he will ever be able to raise a family here.
“My family has been here for generations, and I want to stay here, and I want to see this place get better,” Quinn said. “But if I have the option to go somewhere nicer, where my kids are going to get a better education, and it’s going to be about the same price, why wouldn’t I?”