Huntsville may be the fastest growing city in Alabama, but it has a housing affordability crisis with its lowest income residents.

That’s the opinion of the man who leads an organization that is trying to provide housing for some of the area’s most vulnerable residents, Habitat for Humanity of the River Valley Executive Director Jeremy Foulks.

“We’re trying to bring people together whose rents have doubled,” Foulks said. “We have a young lady in our program right now who was paying $900 a month, which was way above the affordability balance for her to begin with. Back in July, she got a letter from her landlord saying her rent was going to be close to $1,800. We have property management teams who are doing that to low- and middle-income families.”

According to data from the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama, average house rent in Huntsville is more than $1,500 a month, second only to Daphne among the state’s major cities.

“We are getting more calls from people who are living in cars,” Foulks said. “They are couch surfing. Families are being broken up with one member of the family living with grandma, another member of the family living with an aunt and another member of the family living with a sister. We’re seeing a lot more of that, people living in motels.”