> Can somebody explain why Affordable Rent exists? Because in large US cities, housing is artificially scarce (and thus pathologically expensive). This artific

> Can somebody explain why Affordable Rent exists? Because in large US cities, housing is artificially scarce (and thus pathologically expensive). This artificial scarcity is enforced by zoning laws; which prohibit SROs, rooming houses, and apartments with small floor areas, medium/high-rise apartments, non-family roommates, short-term rentals, buildings above a certain height; whilst requiring stuff like parking, solar panels on the roof, and minimum lot/room/floor areas (that have no justification in genuine safety concerns -- these are all regulations that mandate a certain level of aesthetic/luxury qualities). The people who have a financial interest in maintaining these zoning laws (which prohibit/delay/obstruct construction of any kind of dense/tall/small/inexpensive housing, of the kind that exist without any problem in actual proper, non-US cities) are single-family homeowners who are making serious money off this artificial scarcity situation. In this system, subsidised housing (which is generally inaccessible without decade-long waitlists, and meeting extremely narrow criteria (such as having proof of income that's in a narrow range between "low enough to qualify" but also "high enough to be twice the subsidised rent")) has a role as a safety valve to prevent enough coordination that could pose risk to this artificial-scarcity regime. This is not idle theorising -- it worked exactly like that to kill SB827 (a CA state law that would have preempted height limits encoded in local zoning law in areas very close to a subway/train/bus station); where "advocates" for subsidised housing concern-trolled the thing to death with concerns about "displacement".