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Ugh, fine with me. The whole "affordable housing" racket needs some real solutions. The current ones cost way too much money and provide far too few apartments.

Ugh, fine with me. The whole "affordable housing" racket needs some real solutions. The current ones cost way too much money and provide far too few apartments. The solution to high and rising rents for everyone is not to start a lottery system for a few thousand subsidized apartments. That doesn't address the problem at all. What's worse - a lot of these programs mandate things to private developers, thus raising prices for the market-rate middle class units. Double whammy.

d4mi3n 8y ago
Do you have sources for these claims? I always figured some low income housing is better than none, but if these programs are not effective I’d like to know why and how they fail.
- jcampbell1 8y ago
  I know a few people that live in affordable condos. You can only buy and sell to people in a certain income bracket. The people I know that have them got them as grad students but had very wealthy families.
- danielfoster 8y ago
  I also have not seen any data pointing that these programs are effective. Given all the variables involved and the difficulty in collecting data or even determining measures of success, it's very easy to argue in one way or the other. This has been my experience with affordable housing as a New Yorker: 1. Units don't necessarily go to those who need them most. A percentage are always set aside for city employees (public data) and when evaluating applications, developers tend to pick the applicants with the highest credit scores and most stable backgrounds. These people tend to be the ones who need the housing the least (source: real estate friend. It's also not common for recent graduates with low incomes but wealthy parents to get the housing (source: people I know who did this). 2. You're allowed to keep the housing forever, even if your income skyrockets. 3. Affordable housing is often built in the wrong locations. It doesn't make sense to put a $800 / month apartment in a luxury neighborhood where residents can't even afford to buy coffee, but this is often what happens. 4. Continuing the point above, developers usually design affordable units in exactly the same way as luxury market-rate units. This raises costs that the developers must recoup from the market-rate units. Do subsidized renters really need marble countertops? 5. The affordable units built are really just a trickle in a waterfall of all the high-end housing coming to market. The best solution would be to encourage the building of quality, affordable apartments directly in the neighborhoods where people need them most. Even better, the city should improve transportation infrastructure so that the free market can fix the affordable housing issue on its own.
  - d4mi3n 8y ago
    Excellent points I was unaware of, thank you. I also agree with you on the point of public transit in infrastructure. I’m in SF, and not many people who work in the city can afford to live in it. This makes reliable and affordable transit critical as most working class folks are pushed into outlying cities suburbs.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    I don't see why affordable housing shouldn't be given to public employees. The city (and indirectly, taxpayers) have an interest in making sure its workers can live close by. Even if it were entirely for public employees, would that actually be bad? I don't think it's obviously better or worse than a lottery or market-rate housing.
    - ng12 8y ago
      City employees have good pensions, benefits, and job security. Even if their salary is average or slightly below they're not really an "at-risk" population.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Just to comment on #4... I saw a housing development near Monterrey where the affordable housing is definitely not luxury marble. It actually looked like a 3 bedroom interior apartment. The townhouses on either side where way nicer but 2x the price.
- submariel 8y ago
  Frontline has a great documentary on affordable housing called "Poverty, Politics and Profit" that goes in depth on common pitfalls.
pen2l 8y ago
The other big problem with 'affordable housing' is that it's corrupt. You'll find that for many of them, there's a long list of things you get preference for... like being a residence of that little suburb. So offspring of folks who live in some swanky suburb will get the affordable housing even though they are the ones who could probably do without. And often, you'll find that the "lottery" system is not a lottery... it's moms and dads who are working in these affordable housing committees and they cheat so that their sons and daughters get the housing opportunities. When you consider especially that in the large scheme of things it's just a handful of these opportunities available, you quickly find out what a scam this thing is. How do I know this? Because I've seen this all happen. Of the 10 or so households who got affordable housing in MA, I know that more than 8 got it because they didn't really qualify but knew how to play the tricks. One of our family friends is actually trying to divorce his wife (just in the papers) so that the wife gets higher preference rating for a certain house they're going for.

d4mi3n 8y ago

Do you have sources for these claims? I always figured some low income housing is better than none, but if these programs are not effective I’d like to know why and how they fail.

jcampbell1 8y ago
I know a few people that live in affordable condos. You can only buy and sell to people in a certain income bracket. The people I know that have them got them as grad students but had very wealthy families.
danielfoster 8y ago
I also have not seen any data pointing that these programs are effective. Given all the variables involved and the difficulty in collecting data or even determining measures of success, it's very easy to argue in one way or the other. This has been my experience with affordable housing as a New Yorker: 1. Units don't necessarily go to those who need them most. A percentage are always set aside for city employees (public data) and when evaluating applications, developers tend to pick the applicants with the highest credit scores and most stable backgrounds. These people tend to be the ones who need the housing the least (source: real estate friend. It's also not common for recent graduates with low incomes but wealthy parents to get the housing (source: people I know who did this). 2. You're allowed to keep the housing forever, even if your income skyrockets. 3. Affordable housing is often built in the wrong locations. It doesn't make sense to put a $800 / month apartment in a luxury neighborhood where residents can't even afford to buy coffee, but this is often what happens. 4. Continuing the point above, developers usually design affordable units in exactly the same way as luxury market-rate units. This raises costs that the developers must recoup from the market-rate units. Do subsidized renters really need marble countertops? 5. The affordable units built are really just a trickle in a waterfall of all the high-end housing coming to market. The best solution would be to encourage the building of quality, affordable apartments directly in the neighborhoods where people need them most. Even better, the city should improve transportation infrastructure so that the free market can fix the affordable housing issue on its own.
- d4mi3n 8y ago
  Excellent points I was unaware of, thank you. I also agree with you on the point of public transit in infrastructure. I’m in SF, and not many people who work in the city can afford to live in it. This makes reliable and affordable transit critical as most working class folks are pushed into outlying cities suburbs.
- skybrian 8y ago
  I don't see why affordable housing shouldn't be given to public employees. The city (and indirectly, taxpayers) have an interest in making sure its workers can live close by. Even if it were entirely for public employees, would that actually be bad? I don't think it's obviously better or worse than a lottery or market-rate housing.
  - ng12 8y ago
    City employees have good pensions, benefits, and job security. Even if their salary is average or slightly below they're not really an "at-risk" population.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Just to comment on #4... I saw a housing development near Monterrey where the affordable housing is definitely not luxury marble. It actually looked like a 3 bedroom interior apartment. The townhouses on either side where way nicer but 2x the price.
submariel 8y ago
Frontline has a great documentary on affordable housing called "Poverty, Politics and Profit" that goes in depth on common pitfalls.

pen2l 8y ago

The other big problem with 'affordable housing' is that it's corrupt. You'll find that for many of them, there's a long list of things you get preference for... like being a residence of that little suburb. So offspring of folks who live in some swanky suburb will get the affordable housing even though they are the ones who could probably do without. And often, you'll find that the "lottery" system is not a lottery... it's moms and dads who are working in these affordable housing committees and they cheat so that their sons and daughters get the housing opportunities. When you consider especially that in the large scheme of things it's just a handful of these opportunities available, you quickly find out what a scam this thing is. How do I know this? Because I've seen this all happen. Of the 10 or so households who got affordable housing in MA, I know that more than 8 got it because they didn't really qualify but knew how to play the tricks. One of our family friends is actually trying to divorce his wife (just in the papers) so that the wife gets higher preference rating for a certain house they're going for.