The news media is discovering something that the Antiplanner has been saying for years: so-called affordable housing isn’t affordable. The federal, state, and local governments spend tens of billions of dollars a year subsidizing supposedly affordable housing, yet few people who need such housing get into the projects and many of those who do can’t afford the rents that are charged.
104 of the 116 units of the Alameda View Apartments in Aurora, Colorado are dedicated to people earning up to 60 percent of median income, which in the Denver metro area is $75,300 a year. That means average monthly will be as high as $1,883 a month.
As a recent article in the LAist points out, more than 450,000 households in Los Angeles have incomes low enough to qualify for affordable housing, yet fewer than 50,000 such units have been built. One project that opened in 2022 received 7,500 applications for just 65 apartments. Continue reading
