> The phrase "affordable housing" has come to mean "cheap housing for poor people." From a policy perspective, "affordable housing" refers to programs which th

> The phrase "affordable housing" has come to mean "cheap housing for poor people." From a policy perspective, "affordable housing" refers to programs which through some incentive or another, get developers to rent some units at below market rates to people at certain income thresholds. They usually go away (for a specific building) after 10-15 years. This is confusing, because sometimes it really is cheap housing for poor people and other times it's nice, very expensive but below market rate housing for middle class people. The other problem, as mentioned in the OP, is that as you start trying to shift cost for more units you end up with higher overall prices. Thus making the market rate higher, and making it harder to get developers to make the same concessions they did before for future development.