Affordable Housing. History. How to build and how to promote

January 18, 2019 8:52 AM

How can Affordable Housing be built? Construction. Encouraged in urban areas? Defined. What income levels can be represented? Are there any examples of greener?
posted by ebesan to Technology (9 answers total)

That’s a whole Masters program you’re asking for. I live in Portland, we talk about this all the time. Maybe search Willamette Week and OregonLive for articles on this. We talk about it but it’s really difficult. My housing professor used to say, “Affordable housing is existing housing.” Meaning, you can’t make new construction affordable and when we allow existing housing and infrastructure to fall into disrepair, we lose affordable housing.
posted by amanda at 8:58 AM on January 18, 2019 [14 favorites]

Auburn University has a great simple housing program.
The Rural Studio 20K Iniative.
posted by Oyéah at 9:02 AM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

The US construction industry has been slow to adopt meaningful sustainable practices, both energy efficiency and recycled/ recyclable/ green products. There are builders doing a better job.

The free market will build the highest profit housing, so most Affordable Housing (it's a title, used to denote housing that middle and lower income families can afford) requires additional funding. There are lots of issues; a friend bought a house with government assistance, when she should it, she had to share the profits from that same with the housing fund, and was shocked, though of course it was in the contract and had been explained.

Your municipality and State have staff whose job it is to be knowledgeable about Affordable Housing, and probably Sustainability, ask to meet with them, pick their brains. The builders I've met who have expertise in efficiency and sustainability love to discuss it.
posted by theora55 at 9:25 AM on January 18, 2019

In NYC, eligibility for affordable housing is based on AMI. In most cases, 165% of the AMI represents the top boundary, though there are exceptions. You can look it up.
posted by praemunire at 9:31 AM on January 18, 2019

Defined.

It'd be useful for you to define what you mean by affordable housing. The answers to your question will depend on whether you take affordable housing to be per the dictionary or affordable housing to be a re-defined term related to artificially priced housing for specific income segments.
posted by saeculorum at 10:19 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Affordable housing is complex. No doubt a master's course of study touching on land use and transportation, planning, law, policy, politics, social and cultural dynamics, climate change, etc, etc.

Minneapolis is adopting a city-side ban on the ban of missing-middle housing. Oregon's Tina Kotek is looking to do the same, statewide. California has its own strategy and attendant class struggle going on.

citylab.com and sightline.org are great resources for your research.
posted by rubyskye at 11:06 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

It can be built by allowing it to be built. Look up zoning in Japan, and how Tokyo can remain affordable to most people without any public assistance, in comparison to the paucity of availability in cities in the USA.
posted by flimflam at 4:18 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Also check out Vienna, where over half of all residents live in public housing.
posted by panic at 4:13 AM on January 19, 2019

Response by poster: More. In cities; e.g. NYC. Seattle. for all their differences, they are faced w/ a shortage of several levels of middle/lower income demand.
posted by ebesan at 10:43 AM on January 19, 2019