
Developers can profit by building affordable housing almost anywhere - jseliger
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/10/affordable-housing-is-a-moral-choice-and-the-numbers-prove-it/411235/
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jimrandomh
I don't like how this treats "affordable housing" as though affordability were
a built-in property of construction. The way to make housing affordable is to
build lots of units, so that you don't have too many people bidding on too few
apartments. If you don't do that, then everything is going to be expensive no
matter how shitty you make it (see San Francisco). If you do do that, then you
can make the units nice and they'll still end up being cheap.

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kiba
You mean, build houses where people want to live and where the jobs are?

I am pretty sure you only have to build enough houses for three hundred
million people.

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c3534l
I have a seriously hard time believing housing shortages are the result of bad
people and not the underlying economics and regulations. And when you openly
state that the purpose of your program is to demonstrate a particular point of
view, I am not surprised when, lo and behold, the program confirms what you
programmed it to confirm. I would oe much more interested in an honest,
agenda-free analysis of the housing market.

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stephenboyd
The source for this article's is the web app linked at
[http://www.affordableownership.org/inclusionary-
housing/incl...](http://www.affordableownership.org/inclusionary-
housing/inclusionary-housing-calculator-tool/). I attempted to sign up to so I
could use it, but the captcha test is broken for me. Has anyone here been able
to try it?

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saeranv
Yes, I have it. Haven't been able to test it thoroughly, but so far it
functions as advertised.

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readams
There will always be a shortage of below-market-rate housing by definition. If
there were enough of it, it would be market rate.

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iofj
Except that pretty much any measure of market-rate is likely to be biased.
From the FED's estimates biased up to rental sites biased down.

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jmorrow977
Also, the creator of this site can profit by 10% per year by working for 10%
more than it takes to afford ramen noodles and live in a tent.

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krapht
10% is hardly a rate of return to brag amount, especially since dense housing
requires large amounts of capital tied up for multiple years. Assume a complex
takes 18 months to build. Then that 10% is even less.

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brudgers
A 10% projected internal rate of return is unlikely to attract the capital
necessary to develop multifamily housing. The lower the projected returns, the
higher the risk.

Unlike VC, a project that goes south has a massive impact on a portfolio.
There are not 1000:1 real estate projects to make up for losers.

