Originally Posted by
bae
I have been involved locally in producing affordable housing for ~25 years now. I’ve helped run our local Community Land Trust(*), served as a County Planning Commissioner for 12+ years, and was a County Housing Bank Commissioner for years.
Affordable housing, ownership or rental, is a very complicated problem. Randomly throwing money at it doesn’t really help much, long-term. Most of these proposals are transparent attempts to get votes, not an effort to address the variety of structural issues(**) that reduce access to housing in our nation.
(*) My island’s community land trust now administers:
- 8 neighborhoods
- 110 permanently affordable ownership homes
- 94 permanently affordable rental apartments
- 5 office spaces for rent/lease
- 96.1 acres of land
- 5 community gardens
(**) Nearly 20 years ago, the Housing Bank Commission issued a report after much work listing several dozen things that would likely improve our housing situation. The Commission has produced a nearly-identical report every few years since. Many of the items listed were simple no-cost regulatory or land-use changes entirely within the control of the County. The County has relentlessly refused to adopt most of those ideas, preferring instead to pursue a path that raises revenue by taxes on property transactions to fund…more employees at the County to think about affordable housing. They have caused nearly zero new housing opportunities to appear in the market here after wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars, indeed, their actions have likely increased housing costs and reduced new affordable construction.
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