Latest Example of Government's Failure To Improve Housing Affordability On It's Own

[Stuart Udis]

The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) recently acquired a 360 unit 12 story multi-family building for $24M and  a local news outlet  reported on the building.  Through PHA sources, the article indicates the renovation will cost $112M, twice the initial budget. I doubt as a society we will ever solve the affordable housing problem our country faces, but there are certainly measures that can be taken to make housing more affordable. This is just the latest case study of how Government is incapable of improving housing affordability on its own. At $377K/door, this building's costs will be nearly 2X what a similar building would trade for in this location.  

Philadelphia has implemented various forms legislation over the years between abatements, land banks and density bonuses geared towards promoting development in areas that suffered from disinvestment and housing affordability challenges with some legislation having been more effective than others.  I'm curious to hear from others across the US what innovative strategies their municipalities have successfully implemented to incentivize development and promote housing affordability through private investment and cooperation.

[Mike Dymski]

Greenville SC allows density exceptions for hotel to multifamily conversions that have 20% of the units used as affordable housing for at least 25 years, or 30% of the units as affordable housing for at least 20 years.

[Chris Seveney]

Quote from @Stuart Udis:

The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) recently acquired a 360 unit 12 story multi-family building for $24M and  a local news outlet  reported on the building.  Through PHA sources, the article indicates the renovation will cost $112M, twice the initial budget. I doubt as a society we will ever solve the affordable housing problem our country faces, but there are certainly measures that can be taken to make housing more affordable. This is just the latest case study of how Government is incapable of improving housing affordability on its own. At $377K/door, this building's costs will be nearly 2X what a similar building would trade for in this location.  

Philadelphia has implemented various forms legislation over the years between abatements, land banks and density bonuses geared towards promoting development in areas that suffered from disinvestment and housing affordability challenges with some legislation having been more effective than others.  I'm curious to hear from others across the US what innovative strategies their municipalities have successfully implemented to incentivize development and promote housing affordability through private investment and cooperation.

 The all-in podcast was just talking about this and govt bureacracy and how nothing will be affordable as long as we have a government that has so many people creating crazy stipulations that make nothing easy or affordable.

[Jay Hinrichs]

IN Oregon. we have very few derelict houses or building very few.

the one area north of downtown ( the old warehouse district) most all bigger cities have those areas.. the City put a 10 year tax abatement for repurposing the buildings to residential so buyers did not owe property tax for 10 years.  The area is called the Pearl and that worked it totally regentrified the area but not affordable condo's U know start at 500k and go to many millions.

The other attempt at affordable is density through what they call their middle housing zoning and up zoning existing parcels. again led to building boom but still nothing sells for much less than 500k. They also passed a state law that any R 1 lot can now be a duplex but this has not moved the needle much duplexs of new construction still cost far to much to build given land cost and building cost to be quote un quote affordable.

To @Mike Dymski point about density bonus for low income they tried that with new builds and that caused a rush of permits to go in before the law was past and very few projects after the law.  So will see how that all shakes out for PDX.

really the affordable is in Townhouse production by the large production builders thats about as good as it gets.. Exiting apartments sell for 175 to 500 a unit on the open market with 200 to 250 being kind of the median. and rents on the 200 a unit range about 1400 to 1800