A lot of federal money for housing is funneled through non-profit organizations, and those non-profits become lobbyists for continued federal funding. Yet it isn’t clear that they actually do much to make housing affordable. This can be seen from a blog post by Roger Valdez, who says he “was a non-profit housing director for about three years.”
His post analyzes an affordable housing development in the Seattle area being planned by a non-profit called the Plymouth Housing Group, whose purpose (according to its 2016 IRS form 990) is to “develop and manage affordable housing for homeless and very low income individuals.”
Valdez notes that, from 2008 through 2017, non-profits produced 5,576 units of housing. Someone miscalculated to be 620 units a year (they divided by nine when in fact there were ten years from 2008 to 2017). Obviously, that’s more like 558 units per year. Continue reading
