08-31-2016, 09:51 AM
(08-30-2016, 11:17 PM)mpd618 Wrote: I agree with this. When "affordable housing" is conflated with subsidized, rent-geared-to-income units, a big piece is missing, namely the cost of all these programs and how much can be served with a given dollar of funding. If average market rents go down, subsidies can serve more people with the same budget. By far the biggest impact for the most number of people is if there is sufficient supply of a sufficient range of units - and it is cheap enough to build new ones - that there doesn't need to be a subsidy for rents to be affordable.
This is what Seattle is trying to address through an extended property tax holiday for affordable housing. I think that is a reasonable cost, especially as those buildings might not get built at all otherwise (so the lost property tax revenue might not be so much in the end).
Making it easier to build more, and more dense, is good. But more expensive units are more profitable, so at the moment most cities are in a situation where there are not enough affordable units.
I admit that it's possible that this could be done completely without subsidies, but I would like to know of some (western) cities where this has actually worked. Anyone know of some?