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Affordable Housing 101

WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE” MEAN?

According to the federal government, housing is considered “affordable” if it costs no more than 30% of the monthly household income for rent and utilities. If your household income is $60,000 a year, you should pay no more than $1,500 monthly for your mortgage or rent and utilities. If you are in a sales job, making $12.00 an hour, you should be paying no more than $624 dollars a month in rent and utilities.

Every community needs to offer a wide range of housing opportunities for the diverse populations that live and work there.

TODAY’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING WORKS IN THE COMMUNITY

Today’s affordable housing serves families, seniors, and people with disabilities. Affordable housing provides a steppingstone for young families, a stable place to get back on one’s feet for vulnerable community members, and a cost-effective living situation for persons with special needs. The housing can be ownership or rental, a single duplex or the size of many market-rate apartment complexes. Many developments have won design awards. You may live near an affordable housing development and not know it!

Contemporary affordable housing is designed to fit with the character of the neighborhood, with high-quality construction and professional management.

Affordable housing developments meet local building standards and design requirements. Professional on-site resident management includes stringent tenant selection and quick responses to maintenance requests.

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS – MAKING IT WORK

Affordable housing is developed by private developers, mostly non-profits, many of which are local community or faith-based organizations, using a combination of rental income, private funding and government subsidies. Over the past decade, many communities in the San Francisco Bay Area have shown that partnership among local government, non-profit housing developers, community leaders and private financial institutions can create attractive, successful affordable housing developments that not only serve residents, but are an asset to the broader community.

At the federal level, massive cuts in the funding available for affordable housing threaten to undermine these productive public/private partnerships because local governments depend upon federal subsidies to stretch their limited funds.

BROADER BENEFITS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

In addition to helping residents, today’s affordable housing benefits the wider community in significant ways. Typical benefits include:

  • Providing housing for the local workforce, especially lower wage earners

  • Revitalizing distressed areas

  • Directing economic benefits to the local community, such as increased jobs and sales taxes

  • Reducing traffic and improving air quality

  • Promoting economic and social integration while building community

  • Avoiding unnecessary, costly public expenditures by providing stable living situations for homeless people and people with special needs