I live in central Florida. I hear the term affordable housing on the news when I rarely watch it.
So my question what is affordable housing cost suppose to be. No one ever mentions the price.

I know it can reflect on where a person may live like state, county or town. But if lets say I work at a fast food restaurant should the government provide affordable housing in lets say Windermere Fl which is an expensive part of Florida.

I here the term but never the cost.

My wife and I live in central Florida. When we moved here we bought a home we could afford with the money from the sale of our home in New Jersey.
It's only 1000 square feet but it was what we could afford at the time.
It was where we could afford to live.

It's a euphemism for Section 8 housing.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
It's a euphemism for Section 8 housing.

That's exactly what it is.

My house is 1000 square feet. We paid it off 6 months ago. Now its super affordable.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
It's a euphemism for Section 8 housing.

That's exactly what it is.

Right. It's "affordable" because somebody else is forced to subsidize it. If you are "lucky" enough to own your own housing you get to pay for both you and your neighbor!

I predict the coming Biden induced energy crisis will bring about an "affordable energy" program so you can also pay to heat your neighbor's affordable housing!

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Originally posted by 71 TRUCK:
What is affordable housing?

Socialized housing. Taxpayer subsidized.

"Affordable housing" is just another leftist catch-phrase used by commies to deflect from the real meanings.

Lots of yakking about the lack of "affordable housing" here in MQT. Every time some land is available for development, the cry goes up that it should include affordable housing. The developer then points out the cost for building anything will preclude it from being "affordable".

When I think of affordable housing, I think of our first house that was in Billings, MT. It was new in a new subdivision. 1,050 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We had the choice between a full, unfinished basement or a garage. We took the basement. The landscaping was just grass. We paid $34,000 in 1977 which equated to 2X my annual salary. Interest rate was 8% and our PITI was $345. We were happy as can be.

I consider that affordable. We lived in it for 7 years, finished the landscaping, built a shed and finished the basement. We sold it for $70,000.

Today I see a double garage and some remodeling on the home that Zillow now says is worth $365,100. Total BS. Not so affordable.

So, when various politicians call for "more affordable housing" what they are really saying is "we need more slum lords and non-working citizens/bums in our community." That, plus the impact of these housing units on the home values of nearby non-participating residents make this seem like a can't lose proposition!

quote:

Originally posted by mcrimm:
When I think of affordable housing, I think of our first house that was in Billings, MT. It was new in a new subdivision. 1,050 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We had the choice between a full, unfinished basement or a garage. We took the basement. The landscaping was just grass. We paid $34,000 in 1977 which equated to 2X my annual salary. Interest rate was 8% and our PITI was $345. We were happy as can be.

I consider that affordable. We lived in it for 7 years, finished the landscaping, built a shed and finished the basement. We sold it for $70,000.

Today I see a double garage and some remodeling on the home that Zillow now says is worth $365,100. Total BS. Not so affordable.

Reminds me of the house I had prior to this one. Bought it in 1983 for $83K, sold it in 2005 for $470K.

Housing has gone nuts

In Johnson county Iowa
It means giant suck hole blight on society.

It ruined 8 neighborhoods in a city with only 28 neighborhoods.

26 people from south Chicago qualified in the 1st 12 weeks.

So housing for 52 people.

But 169 people with little to no verifiable income move in and immediately start going in public aid, sell drugs and the crime rate tripled in 16 months.

Real estate values plummeted,
And still suffers 40 years later

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I've worked as a sub contractor for three local construction companies in my 37 years on the job. All of them when doing private new homes they are all in the new development with the most expensive houses going up in town. They do that because the city has over the years raised permit fees. Government regulations and the environment hoops construction companies have to go through to build are getting more and more expensive. In some area's environmental studies and litigation really drive up the cost of building. Now one lower income subdivision went up here about 20 years ago. Those involved told me they'd never do it again. The government was so involved and the rules and regs were absolutely a pain in the ass. It simply isn't affordable for these companies to build affordable (smaller) housing. They can't make money doing it.

You know what's made housing so unaffordable?

Investors to include those from China. We are literally paying them to enslave us. We buy their shit, they buy houses here, they can afford to pay more than Americans because we paid for their goods, and they rent those houses back to us.

I have many friends who work in the home building business in the Orlando area. Some of them build vacation homes which are $700k, houses with 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms. Their sole purpose is to be rented out. One Chinese guy bought 3 of them.

A neighborhood I worked in as a superintendent had 60 houses. 20 had people living there already, the other 40 were being built with 20 of those bought by Chinese investors, some of whom paid cash. This was in Windermere, FL which is a higher end suburb of Orlando. Those houses were $600k+. They sent a rep to check on the status of the build and her only concern was when it would be finished so she could list them for rent.

Investors like this and American investors overpay builders for houses which drives the cost out of reach for the regular buyer. This leads them to less options and more demand for lower priced housing which isn't that low priced anymore when demand is high and supply cannot catch up. Factor in the covid bullshit from 2020 to now, trades are lacking, materials are lacking not just in building the house but also appliances needed to close a new home such as range, dishwasher, and garbage disposal and there is no way the builders can even halfway keep up.

The big builders are going to sell blocks of homes to investors who can overpay and don't care about cosmetic imperfections because they're just renting them out. You don't like it, there's people lined up to buy if you pass. Oh yeah, we're going to keep your deposit or builder fee if you back out.

Thanks everyone.

I kind of get tired listening that we need more affordable housing but no one ever comes up with a figure that is realistic.
As others have said, try to convince builders to build "affordable housing" and most will say it is not worth it.
Then force builders to put aside a certain amount of homes they build for affordable housing and most will go else where to build.

I grew up in NJ, we had something called MT Laurel decision or doctrine. From what I can remember it said each town had to provide a certain amount of affordable housing. Some towns tried to say that apartments counted but the state said no. Some towns were aloud so sell off their responsibility to other towns however this made other towns into kind of not so nice towns to live in. Eventually we moved to Florida and never thought of this again.
Just recently with the high cost of housing in Florida the subject has come up again as to what is "affordable"

Things like single mom working for a fast food business for the last 15 years complains she need someone to help take care of her (x) number of children and she need a place with (x) number of bedrooms she can afford.
Once again what is affordable.

Don't get me wrong I do feel for these people and anyone who is struggling just to get buy, especially now in these economic times. It can happen to anyone of us at any time I get it.

Affordable housing where I work just means someone else's tax dollars are paying the rent...

"Affordable Housing" means different things depending who is pushing it.

In my town we are a very expensive resort. Folks who work regular jobs or own small businesses generally cannot afford to live here. Affordable means those who work here are annoyed they have to commute in.

The other side of it is when developers (and possibly local politicians) push it. One of the scams is to put in high density inexpensive housing which gets all kinds of subsidies and tax credits. The developer is required to keep it "affordable" for some nominal time period, maybe 5 years. Then they convert it to expensive luxury condos which they sell. They've made a lot of positive cash flow out of the affordable period (with all the government assistance), and then big profit on selling the condos. They'd never get approval nor subsidies in the first place to build high density luxury housing, so this is a back door.

Here in my part of San Diego, "affordable housing" equates to the developer selling $800K homes for $200K (25%) to those who qualify. (Section 8?) There was a percentage of homes they had to sell at this reduced - like 12%-15%

There was some stipulations about length of time the Buyer had to remain in the home until selling and the limited amount of profit which could made.

So yeah, the take payer gets burned twice - first by paying for the home through payouts and second by way of the reduced property taxes.

The land lords saw FREE money,
The criminals saw FREE money.
The builders saw FREE money.

The sorry ass politicians saw more voters

Now no one involved in it's implementation can walk down the street with out getting the look of shame.

From the neighbors, the cops , the retailers the city state and county workers who have to deal with these lazy ass felon chankers.

I know ,I know Iam lumping like a mad man.
It's not right lumping all financially illiterate people in one pile

I know for a fact that a small percentage of people only require assistance 8 or 15 months before they get up and out on their own.

There are some financially responsible citizens out there.

BUT 75% of their neighbors are typecasting the whole cross section.

The demands for 'affordable housing' to be built are pretty much scams.

The way things work, every new bit of housing built makes something else more affordable. Whoever moved out of existing-house-1 to move to new-house-2 just put old-house-1 on the market. More supply, same demand -> existing-house-1 just got more affordable.

Thomas Sowell in one of his books talked about the source of the 'housing crisis' in the Bay Area of CA being largely due to governments taking land off the table for new houses to be built. Reduced supply of buildable land -> more expensive buildings. They never talk about making 'affordable housing' by allowing building on 'open spaces'....wonder why?

Don't know that's universal, but it holds in the places I've lived.

And, even if - hypothetically - the small number of 'affordable' units that could be built made a difference (drop in the bucket) then the question would then go to 'who gets them' and 'what if those particular 'deserving-because-currently-low-income' beneficiaries move, or die, or win the lottery, or god-forbid start to earn higher incomes? Ah, questions they don't like....nothing to see here. Move along.

No, this is mostly about governmental entities and 'community organizers' putting up politically-correct, but removable roadblocks, and then getting paid by the developers to remove them by giving up a pound of flesh.

Not sure whether the definitions of 'extortion' or of 'blackmail' apply to the latter technique of money-grabbing. Might that depend on jurisdiction?

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