It’s hard to imagine the city of Oxford having problems with housing when everywhere one looks there are new apartment complexes or houses under construction. However, it’s not the lack of places to live, it’s the lack of affordable places to live. Oxford has been facing an affordable housing crisis for quite some time and residents and students have begun speaking out.
Cristen Hemmins is on the board of LOU-Home Inc, a non-profit organization that is focused on providing affordable housing to the low income population of Lafayette, Oxford, and the university community, and she is a big advocate for getting the housing that is needed.
“LOU-Home envisions a integrated community where not only the wealthy can live in Oxford, but the people who do the hard work that make this such lovely community can too,” Hemmins said.
Many of the blue-collar workers such as firefighters, teachers, nurses, and construction workers are finding themselves unable to afford the housing here and have to live outside of the county.
“We’ve been trying to find land in the Oxford city limits, on which we can build affordable housing,” Hemmins said. “The problem is there’s not very much land left that hasn’t been used in Oxford, and then once we find land we have to get the city to agree to give it to us or let us buy it at discounted rates.”
Another problem they’ve come across is the phrase “NIMBY”, which stands for “Not In My Backyard”.
“When people think low income housing, they think I don’t want that in my backyard, it needs to go somewhere else,” Hemmins said. “So it can be hard even when we find land because the neighbors around say they don’t want it near them.”
Not only have locals been concerned with this issue, but this semester students at the University of Mississippi have also learned about the housing crisis in two classes. In Jennifer Sadler’s internet marketing class, students have used social media to bring awareness about the housing crisis to the community. In James Thomas’s affordable housing class, an honors course cross listed with sociology, students have gone out and surveyed residents about lower-level housing.
“We designed a survey looking at a variety of factors at the household level, such as the level of the actual dwelling, and the level of the neighborhood,” Thomas said. “Basically we sample a number of blocks in the county and students go in teams of two to administer these surveys.”
Thomas’s students have been out in the field for seven consistent weeks and he thinks they’ve gained a lot from this course.
“Often when we talk about poverty, students minds might not necessarily go to their immediate surroundings, so it gave them that first hand experience and knowledge of their community,” Thomas said. “Also, prior to the course when they thought about issues related to poverty, insecurity housing was never really something that was on their radar.”
One student, sophomore Lucy Healy, was surprised when she found out about the housing crisis.
“I would say that poverty and homelessness in general in Lafayette county is almost invisible,” Healy said. “We live in such a bubble in our apartment complexes and dorms, that we don’t see the hardships that these people are going through every single day just to have a roof over their head.”
One major issue the community has been facing is the the shutting down of the Riverside Place, an affordable housing property. 100 residents were told in February that they’d have to find a new place to live. Many are struggling because some can’t find places that will take their vouchers and some may not be welcomed by their neighbors to live among them.
“I think it’s really important for the community to understand there’s a real opportunity here for us to push our local policy makers on what kind of community we want to be to the people that need us most,” Thomas said.
Kathryn Abernathy 