> 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.
> 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 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.
Generally the term "affordable housing" refers to living spaces (apartments or houses) that can be rented or purchased by people or families who earn less than a specific benchmark.
"Affordable housing" is a very specific term - it means city-subsidized housing that is restricted to tenants within a certain income bracket (and usually applicants are selected by lottery). There are sometimes requirements that new developments must set aside a certain % of units as affordable housing.
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”?
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.
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."
Affordable housing is a loaded term. In the US that means housing whose price is fixed to some percentage of the area's median income. I do not want affordbale housing. I want market rate housing with uncapped supply. This would make it a commodity.
Maybe "non-market housing" should be the more widely used term in North America for the kind of service "affordable housing" provides. It better frames the idea that the unit of housing isn't meant to be sold and priced based on market forces and dynamics.
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.
“Affordable housing” is just a coded way to avoid saying “subsidized housing”.
Not exactly.
"Subsidized housing" is when the renter or the landlord receive a payment from the government to supplement the rent paid by a renter.
"Affordable housing" is a broader umbrella and can also include legal requirements that the landlord set rent rates for a certain percentage of its units at a particular level (often expressed as xx% of the average wage within xx distance from the building).
Affordable housing can also include rent control, like the type in New York; and probably other methods I'm unfamiliar with.
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).
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