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I was all excited when I saw on Zillow a decent new apartment complex in town with rents that were actually reasonable... until, after hours of studying photos
by neilv 3y ago
I was all excited when I saw on Zillow a decent new apartment complex in town with rents that were actually reasonable... until, after hours of studying photos and floorplans and neighborhood, I noticed a statement on Zillow, near the bottom of the scroll, in one of the tabs in right column, that the building is subsidized, and there's a permissible income range.
While some of us could qualify while on early startup salaries, I don't know how I'd feel about subsidies as a techbro, and I know I wouldn't feel good about having to move from a nice building (big time investment, moving monetary cost, and quite possibly moving to a crappier building) because the startup was doing OK.
I was disappointed, but not surprised. As a middle-class techbro, this is a very lite version of a much bigger problem that has affected many low-income people. News has long had stories about low-income people who are trapped with subsidies they need (housing, food, support for children, etc.). They make a lousy wage, and can't afford to get much of a better wage, because the societal safety net on which they depend would be ripped out from under them before they could afford it to.
- hollerith 3y ago>I know I wouldn't feel good about having to move from a nice building because the startup was doing OK. Subsidized apartment buildings in the US don't make you move out if your income goes up: they just take away your subsidy, i.e., your rent goes up to what HUD calls the apartment's "contract rent". Then HUD (statistically speaking) directs the money they used to use to subsidize your rent to building more subsidized housing. HUD wants successful people living in HUD-subsidized buildings, at least the ones with children in them, to serve as role models.
- neilv 3y agoInteresting; that sounds enlightened of HUD.