MARSHALL — With the rising cost of supplies and construction, Jeff Gladis, housing director at United Community Action Partnership (UCAP), a grass roots nonprofit offering programs in such areas as housing, wonders if the term affordable housing even exists anymore.

“It worries me for people that come to United Community Action for some of the resources that we have, and it worries for me for the general population because things have gotten so expensive,” he said. “That ability to do upkeep and repairs on your home is really compromised because of the cost. People have to make choices — do I fix up my house or do I pay for this other thing that we need? What do I spend my limited resources on?”

UCAP housing service programs for low or reduced income persons include offering homeowners a loan with the requirement of staying in the home for 15 years and earning loan forgiveness.

There is also funding for roofs, siding, windows, doors, furnaces, and some electrical items or issues. Additionally, the weatherization program provides insulation and utilizes technology to make homes more energy efficient. All of those programs have budgets and increases in costs are pushing those budgets close to their limits.

“We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the cost of construction materials, whether it be for rehab or for new construction since COVID,” Gladis said. “Those jumps that happened back then haven’t really gone away. If one product goes down, another, say lumber goes down, steel goes up, things like that. So that general cost to build has really jumped in the last four years.”

From a UCAP perspective, the increase in costs for materials especially can be impactful with funders that in turn work with grant resources, which have caps on what can be spent on a house. For those reasons, Gladis says it is becoming “harder and harder to do the amount of things that need to be done.”

“For example, with some of the funders we work with, there’s certain things that are required to be done,” Gladis said.

“Those requirements are tied to the funds and sometimes when you take what it costs to do those things out of the project, it gets even tougher to do a project. For instance, we’re doing a rehab project and you have to deal with lead paint. Well, lead paint can eat up a bunch of (a budget). It could be that a homeowner wants to do siding and doesn’t want to do their windows, but their windows have lead paint and most of our funders require that we take care of that. So then the cost of that project goes up because you’re doing things that are requirements of the program,” he said.

With the cost escalation, Gladis said UCAP is seeing an increase on wait lists of people needing some form of housing assistance. At the end of the day, Gladis said the organization tries to help out as many people with housing needs as possible in a financial challenging time where financial factors such as inflation are creating budget challenges.

“It is hard to tell people they are on a waiting list,” he said. “There is a lot of satisfaction from helping people but we’re not able to help them all. That does pull on the heartstrings. We dwell on the positive that we keep doing what we can.”