> with stipulations of affordable housing as part of the deal If that works out anything like it has been in San Francisco, those commitments are extremely sof

> with stipulations of affordable housing as part of the deal If that works out anything like it has been in San Francisco, those commitments are extremely soft, and "affordable" is often defined as a household with over $150k of income, while "low income" is literally a household with like 40k that spends its' entire income on housing. Further, luxury developers don't want affordable or low income units in their buildings, so they pay into a fund for the city to build, while there are incredibly few parcels that qualify, and the city continues to compete with developers to build them. > "Projects" don't work and they truly deserve their reputation. Valencia Gardens is a wonderful building with low-income housing in the SF Mission, and many of us would love to see more like it. There are advantages to people of different income levels sharing a neighborhood, and personally I have no problem sharing my building, but developers aren't building to my cultural taste profile. My argument for SF, and I suspect would hold as much water in NYC, is that if affordable housing is built, _then_ some poorly maintained buildings can _perhaps_ be taken down to build _future_ "market rate" housing, once people living in older buildings have had a chance to rebalance within their affordability guidelines. All in all, it's pretty insane that esp these two cities are building a disturbing amount of housing which requires two six figure wage earners living together and scraping by. de Blasio has gotten some credit for about 20k new units popping up in NYC, which is about the number we need in the SF Mission, but population wise it would be like saying that the entire Bay Area has increased affordable housing by 20k units, which would be laughable as an accomplishment.