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Title: Affordable Housing Primer
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2020
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Abstract: The phrase “affordable housing” is so ubiquitous, and applied to so many different types of homes, that it sometimes feels like it’s lost any clear meaning. When we say we want to build and preserve affordable housing, what do we mean? This primer will help policymakers, public officials, advocates, and other stakeholders answer this question — to better understand the many different types of affordable housing, what they accomplish, how they’re regulated, and who they serve. In turn, we hope that knowledge will be used to develop better-informed, more effective housing policy that improves affordability and protects against displacement. So what is “affordable housing”? Virtually everyone agrees that homes built with public funds and reserved for low income households qualify as affordable housing. In privately financed developments, units set aside for low income (and perhaps even middle-class) residents — usually mandated by density bonus or inclusionary zoning programs — are affordable housing, too. But what about rent-controlled housing, where rents can be high or low but only increase by a small percentage each year? Or micro-units, where total rents are low but per-square-foot rents are high? In less expensive cities should a new, unsubsidized, for-profit townhome sold for $250,000 be considered “affordable,” or should the term be reserved only for below-market housing? What distinguishes low income housing from extremely low income housing? And how about workforce housing? What even is workforce housing? In this primer we will discuss five (5) affordable housing categories, including details about who builds them, how they’re built, who pays, and how rents are set and can change over time. We will also review six (6) affordability levels — that is, the restrictions on household income and other conditions that determine who can reside in a given affordable unit and how much they pay.
Url: https://escholarship.org/content/qt8b3474n0/qt8b3474n0.pdf
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Authors: Phillips, Shane
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Housing and Segregation
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