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> Housing affordability is a serious crisis right now and neither political party seems to be recognizing it. Why do you say this? There have been numerous bi

> Housing affordability is a serious crisis right now and neither political party seems to be recognizing it. Why do you say this? There have been numerous bills introduced at the local, state, and federal levels which specifically aim to address housing affordability. Seriously, just type in "affordable housing bill" into your favorite search engine and look at all the articles coming up from the past six months. My local city council has affordable housing on the agenda for several of the committee meetings.

UncleOxidant 5y ago
None of the local "affordable housing" actions I'm seeing seem like they actually address the problem at the level it needs to be addressed. They give incentives to developers to build a certain number of "affordable" units which must stay "affordable" for X number of years for them to get their tax breaks. In the meantime they build a lot more high-end units and very few mid-level units. Mostly this seems like a gift to the developers. Do we get some more affordable units? Yeah, but it's a drop in the bucket and after some number of years they can go back to market rate. People are on waiting lists for these "affordable" units for years. These units are reserved for people making some percentage of the poverty level income. People in the middle get nothing. In my area/state they've dropped most of the zoning restrictions for locating apartments and ADUs. So you can add an ADU (a small dwelling that can be rented out), but that takes capital that most residential homeowners don't have. Add to this the fear that by building an ADU your property tax will likely go up very substantially and there aren't a lot of takers. tl;dr Most affordable housing efforts are currently aimed at people who make poverty level incomes (and that's great). I don't see much locally aimed at providing housing that's affordable to folks in the middle. And as rents rise, more and more folks in the middle are not able to afford housing.
- danaris 5y ago
  That indicates a lack of understanding of how to solve the problem (or, at the very least, a disagreement with you about how to solve it), not a lack of recognition that there is a problem.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    Or it indicates a lack of taking the problem as seriously as it should be taken.
Retric 5y ago
You get affordable housing by building more housing not simply designating a percentage of housing to be affordable. If anything current affordable housing initiatives just make things worse by discouraging new development. Building 10,000 new apartments is strictly better than building 5,000 apartments even if you designate 30% of them to be affordable. The ideal solution is to designate minimum density, so for every acre of land you must have at least X homes.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

None of the local "affordable housing" actions I'm seeing seem like they actually address the problem at the level it needs to be addressed. They give incentives to developers to build a certain number of "affordable" units which must stay "affordable" for X number of years for them to get their tax breaks. In the meantime they build a lot more high-end units and very few mid-level units. Mostly this seems like a gift to the developers. Do we get some more affordable units? Yeah, but it's a drop in the bucket and after some number of years they can go back to market rate. People are on waiting lists for these "affordable" units for years. These units are reserved for people making some percentage of the poverty level income. People in the middle get nothing. In my area/state they've dropped most of the zoning restrictions for locating apartments and ADUs. So you can add an ADU (a small dwelling that can be rented out), but that takes capital that most residential homeowners don't have. Add to this the fear that by building an ADU your property tax will likely go up very substantially and there aren't a lot of takers. tl;dr Most affordable housing efforts are currently aimed at people who make poverty level incomes (and that's great). I don't see much locally aimed at providing housing that's affordable to folks in the middle. And as rents rise, more and more folks in the middle are not able to afford housing.

danaris 5y ago
That indicates a lack of understanding of how to solve the problem (or, at the very least, a disagreement with you about how to solve it), not a lack of recognition that there is a problem.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  Or it indicates a lack of taking the problem as seriously as it should be taken.

Retric 5y ago

You get affordable housing by building more housing not simply designating a percentage of housing to be affordable. If anything current affordable housing initiatives just make things worse by discouraging new development. Building 10,000 new apartments is strictly better than building 5,000 apartments even if you designate 30% of them to be affordable. The ideal solution is to designate minimum density, so for every acre of land you must have at least X homes.