Habitat Greenville hosted an amazing lunch and learn this week that gave new insights into the local, regional and national outlook on affordable housing.
Laura Dawson Ullrich, a senior economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, spoke to about 30 Upstate businesses leaders at Soby’s in downtown Greenville.
Some of the key messages from this hour-long symposium:
- The Greenville metro area is doing better than most when it comes to jobs.
- Inflation is 3 percent. That’s an improvement, but still high.
- Workforce participation is a huge issue and is not going to get better unless something drastic happens.
- In 1935: 67 was the life expectancy of the average American and age for full social security was 67. Those numbers are now 80 and 67. That’s part of the reason workforce participation is not going to decline on its own.
- White males without college degrees are the fastest growing group not entering the workforce.
- Housing has been a big part of inflation costs.
- New housing starts are just getting back to late 1990s number after The Great Recession of 2008.
- A lot of communities are coming up with plans to solve affordable housing in the past few years. It remains too early to say what is the best path or practices.
- The Washington, D.C. area, Charlotte and a host of South Florida transplants are fueling the people who are moving to Greenville. Oddly, Honolulu is number 11 on metro areas people are moving from to Greenville.
- The reason is housing costs here are lower than in those metros.
We want to thank Laura for taking the time to speak to our group.
