I don't think there's anything pedantic about it. The term "affordable housing" implies that housing which isn't subsidized isn't affordable. But the vast majority of housing is bought, sold, and owned by regular people without subsidizing. The term is not accurate at all. The fraction of housing that is only available to a number of people in the single digits is so small as to not be worth considering. "All but 0.0001% of housing is affordable" would be pedantic; "all housing is affordable" is not.
> The phrase "affordable housing" has come to mean "cheap housing for poor people."
More specifically, it's come to mean "subsidized housing for poor people". It's often contrasted with "luxury housing", which is implicitly anything new-built and market-rate.
1. A polite way to say "housing project" or "subsidized housing" to not scare people.
2. A buzzword to force more housing density and/or promote social engineering agendas. When used in this sense, it isn't actually linked to affordability.
HUD defines affordable housing in terms of, well, its affordability. The author attempts to define it in terms of attributes secondary at best to affordability.
To the extent there's a discrepancy between the definitions of the federal government agency in charge of such matters and a random author on substack (who cites no source for their definitional claim), I'm going to go with the agency.
The definition is the relevant one for the context. The definition of affordable here is relative to the people who may buy it. If it is affordable for >50% of new homebuilders in US, Europe, Japan, etc, and for the minority middle classes in middle income countries (china, Brazil..) then it is "affordable" in the context that we are talking about.
That's right. "Affordable" by itself doesn't say anything about who can afford it. If we were talking about affordable for the middle class, we'd call it "Affordable for the middle class." This is why the term is a misnomer. All housing is affordable, but the term is being used to describe something other than affordability (subsidization).
> Affordable housing - a limited supply of apartments taken off the market and given off in a lottery to a lucky few who get to pay less than market rate for rent
No, affordable housing for a given income level is defined by a cost formula. Achieving affordable housing for lower income levels is frequently done by the means you describe, because you literally cannot build it in quantity if it is distributed by normal market means because what is new will be desirable, and therefore both expensive and snapped up by the well-off, for that reason alone.
Affordable housing is a misnomer. Definitionally: afford: 'To have the financial means for'.
Affordable housing in London, UK.
Does it cost 3.5x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a single person? ;-)
Does it cost 6x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a couple? Not there yet.
Instead it costs some percentage of market rate.
Which generally ends up being 20x min wage or similar. Yes - as a person you'd need to become three, four, five times more useful before you can get this starter home.
As far as I can tell it's just trolling. It genuinely feels like those with wealth laughing at the lower classes, there's no other explanation for such a ridiculous use of language.
A Bentley does not become 'affordable' if I offer it to you for 50% off.
Even minimum wage would be a high bar to set because it doesn't feel affordable to everyone. But at the moment we're saying 'the top 10% can afford it so that's fine'.
What is “affordable housing”? All housing becomes affordable once you build enough of it. Is it just the politically correct way of saying “low-quality housing”?
Affordable housing could also refer to rural housing, admittedly ignoring context. I don't like the term, sorry. It's spun to be more positive than small housing which is more accurate.
You're arguing different things. You're using a plain English version of the definition of "affordable," beaner is trying to describe the real estate term of art "affordable housing."
On the subject of affordable housing, not to be argumentative, what is it? Why is that term used? If there was sufficient housing, it would be affordable. Seems to me affordable housing means crap housing, thereby cheap in the current environment where there is insufficient housing. Therefore people should stop talking about affordable housing, and start talking about more housing.
I'm not vilifying anything. I'm just saying that I don't have any convenient phrases that handily sum up the kinds of things I intend and using the phrase "affordable housing" means something to other people that I'm not intending. I keep saying "affordable housing" and it keeps going bad places and I'm realizing that it does so because it is not the right expression to communicate what I have in mind.
That's a pithy, contrarian slogan, not a statement of fact. "Affordable Housing" is a term of art with a specific definition, and yes, it really exists, all over these United States.
Also, if you want to use it colloquially, then housing is, by definition, affordable for most of the people who live in housing and are not running a spending deficit.
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