SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Sioux Falls is one of the cheapest cities to live in the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone to find affordable housing.
“Right now, it really is a huge need. Not just for affordable housing for rental but affordable home ownership,” Larissa Deedrich, Executive Director of Sioux Falls Housing, said. “So we’re seeing a lot of people who are looking for those first-time homes and then being priced out by some of the larger developers that are coming in. And the interest rates not going down, that’s not helping anybody at this point.”
Deedrich says one of their big pushes for this year is developing more options for affordable houses.
“We are getting ready to build eight new units this summer so they’ll be ready to start selling in November of this year,” Deedrich said.
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Sioux Falls Housing also has apartment complexes they’ve developed throughout the city. Deedrich says they have rentals and assistance programs for every income level.
“There’s such a stigma with affordable housing and a lot of people thing that they’re very low income or they’re people who are coming in off the street and that’s just not true,” Deedrich said. “Affordable housing is for everyone. It’s for the teacher, it’s for the police officer, the fireman, the working family.”
Now you might be wondering, what does affordable housing look like? Well, Deedrich says people shouldn’t spend more than 30 or 40 percent of their monthly income on rent and right now she says the average price for a three-bedroom unit in Sioux Falls is around $1,600. To comfortably afford that rent, you’d want to have an annual income of $64 thousand or just over $30 an hour.
To give another example, for a smaller unit at $900 a month, the affordable annual income would be around $36 thousand or a little over $17 an hour.
