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{"id":346,"date":"2014-07-28T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/affordable-housing-additional-thoughts.html"},"modified":"2014-07-28T23:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T23:26:00","slug":"affordable-housing-additional-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/affordable-housing-additional-thoughts.html","title":{"rendered":"Affordable housing – additional thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I was thinking about the affordable housing issue some more after my prior post<\/a> on Detroit. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mentally, I was dividing \u201chousing affordability\u201d into a couple issues:<\/p>\n

1) \u00a0Supply\/demand imbalances, both artificial (restrictions on dense housing construction, minimum home size\/lot size) and more \u201cnatural\u201d (geographic limitations such as mountains limiting the buildable area, or a sudden boom in an area meaning that there simply hasn\u2019t been time for housing construction)<\/p>\n

2) \u00a0Expectations beyond simply being adequately housed, e.g., families that take on too much debt in order to provide the idealized single-family house in the suburbs or to be in a \u2018good school district.\u201d<\/p>\n

3) \u00a0Families for whom the issue isn\u2019t \u201chousing affordability\u201d but simply being unable to afford housing in the same way as food, transit, and other needs are \u201cunaffordable\u201d due to poverty\/low-incomeness.<\/p>\n

So as far as #3, it\u2019s just silly to speak of \u201chousing affordabiilty\u201d rather than acknowledge that at some point we\/\u201dSociety\u201d\/the government has made the decision to provide welfare-type benefits in the form of vouchers\/benefits-in-kind rather than cash to ensure that it\u2019s properly spent.<\/p>\n

Of course, in a hypothetical of someone earning federal minimum wage, 40 hours per week, and following the fairly \u201cblind\u201d recommendation that housing take up 1\/3 of your gross wage (that is, ignoring taxes, EITC, etc.), that gives a little more than $400 per month for our hypothetical earner \u2014 enough for our \u201cbaseline\u201d 1 bedroom apartment in Detroit. \u00a0A single mother who can\u2019t get any more than a part-time job can\u2019t even spend that much. \u00a0Which means that even in an idealized, dense-housing situation that has brought housing costs down to this hypothetical baseline level, poor people are still going to be poor. \u00a0If you have no, or little income, you\u2019re still going to need income support in some manner or another, whether in the form of allowances\/vouchers\/benefits-in-kind for your basic needs (food, housing, clothing, transportation, medical care) or just a chunk of cash.<\/p>\n

As to the expectations issue, that\u2019s a bit more difficult \u2014 but in a way, to the extent that people make poor decisions, it\u2019s their own business.<\/p>\n

Which gets us to the supply\/demand imbalances. \u00a0Would a governmental unit, city or suburban, which professes concern about the cost of housing, be willing to take a step back and make changes in their zoning? \u00a0Has the damage already been done? \u00a0Has the mindset that we\u2019ve had for so many years (and to a significant degree continue to have) that we simultaneously worry about \u201chousing affordability\u201d but at the same time cheer the increase in home prices meant that we (or, more precisely, government officials) can\u2019t see the connection between restrictions on the supply of housing units, the cost of housing, and the ability of the poor to afford housing, or of anyone to afford the sort of housing that they expect?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"