Affordable Housing Has Become Unaffordable to Build | The Tyee
Affordable Housing Has Become Unaffordable to Build | The Tyee
A ‘perfect storm’ of rising costs makes it hard to keep rents low, say non-profits.
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Then let the government build it, profit isn’t the point
Building all affordable housing with tax dollars is a noble goal, but that’s not happening anytime soon and our housing crisis demands action now. Our current regime has nowhere near the money and administrative power to facilitate this alone.
Why not just make it easier for for-profit AND non-profit developers to build housing in the meantime? Fixing the broken process is free and we can start today.
The government needs to fill in the underconstruction of housing since 2009. All of the "market based solutions" have been attempted and failed.
The ONLY remaining solutions are government produced housing targeted at first time home buyers and pre-empting zoning, parking and density requirements such that new housing can be built with less materials and space. Those are it. Anything else is just nonsense political masturbation about bipartisanship and unicorns.
Since 2009 private investment in housing has been too low and it will continue to be too low.
I'm confused by your assumption that "private investment in housing has been too low and it will continue to be too low." Do you think private companies, the very greedy developers, are choosing to limit their investment in such a lucrative industry? Their business has been artificially restricted by something you hinted at, zoning requirements. It's reductive to say "market based solutions have been attempted" when municipal governments have had a stranglehold on new supply since the 60s, there is nothing natural about this market because it's incapable of responding to demand.
pre-empting zoning, parking and density requirements such that new housing can be built with less materials and space
Why are we only removing restrictions for the federal government? Why not also allow non-profit and for-profit pipelines that already exist contribute to this shortage of housing in the meantime? Even if you could raise the hundreds of billions (if not trillions) from the feds, they can't administer this program anytime soon.
I'll reiterate my original point: I wish we entrusted the government with building housing and cut out for-profit developers for such an essential human need, but I know there's no way the feds are able to raise that money, political capital, and administrative power in the next decade at least. I feel the same way about food, but I'm not saying we need to end food production until it's a public entity.
private investment since 2009 has been too low to sustain housing demand. Food production in the US, as I understand it, is already subsidized. The time to mimic the food model has passed; if we wanted to maintain surplus builders during housing market downturns you'd have to subsidize them during the downturn.
our housing crisis demands action
I love the 'act now think later' banners.
Building all housing with tax dollars alone is a noble goal, and one we should strive towards, but realistically that isn’t happening anytime soon and our housing crisis is a raging fire that demands solutions now.
It would be exorbitantly expensive, like hundreds of billions if not trillions to catch up on our deficit. It’d also require a complete overhaul of our current market-based regime and a herculean administrative arm that our government isn’t anywhere near ready to facilitate.
In the meantime, we can just make it easier for for-profit AND non-profit developers to build housing. We can undo the last century of nimby-centric zoning that restricted housing starts in our major cities to build housing. That’s free, and we can start today.