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Affordable Housing


bikwillie

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Developers were riding the wave of people willing to pay $300+/sf for a downtown address and why wouldn't they. Nobody really saw the recession coming, plus the first few affordable projects were all a flop... Person Pointe comes to mind. But the newly reinvented sub 200k market for downtown is coming... along with the realization that the market for affordable cool apartments downtown is heavily underserved. Every good citizen wants diversity and shared prosperity for downtown. The slippery slope for me comes when the person who chooses not to work and live off the government has near or better options that person making "50k a year."

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This is quite unfortunate. I think Jones really points out a very important point. Affordable housing with a capital A is like a bad word that nobody wants to hear. People associate it with public housing projects and don't want to have anything to do with it. But the fact is that there are a lot of people left out of the whole housing game in that $40k-50k income range, especially in the downtown vicinity. They don't qualify for Affordable Housing assistance, but they also cannot afford $200k fixer-uppers.

Affordable (with a lowercase A) rentals are being purchased to be replaced with luxury townhomes and condos every day. Nothing new is being built downtown for people in this income range. The only alternatives for purchase in the (walkable) downtown vicinity are in areas that need a lot of work and have higher concentrations of crime, but someone in this income range does not have the money lying around to do a lot of major work to a property.

This issue is important to me because my income is just outside the income requirements for assistance, and I want to purchase a home that is walkable to (or at the very least bikeable to) downtown if I am going to purchase anything at all. I don't care if I can get more square feet for less money out in the 'burbs, it is just not the lifestyle that works for me. Currently, it pays for me to rent where I am instead of buying because there is nothing walkable to downtown that I can truly afford without being house-poor (and that is not something I'm interested in getting into). I can only pray that my landlord doesn't decide to sell anytime in the near future.

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In fact, there are plenty of houses near downtown that person making $50K a year can afford. They just don't want to live in those neighborhoods. If one is only referring to new construction with no crime, then you'll have to go pretty far outside of downtown to find that on $50K. Even the aging, split-level land of North Hills is too pricey for that income (sales ~$190/sqft).

I don't think it is fair for one to expect first rate housing that is that far below the area's average household income ($78K). Think that's high? Try living in New York in D.C. Now are you wondering why so many wives work?

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In fact, there are plenty of houses near downtown that person making $50K a year can afford. They just don't want to live in those neighborhoods. If one is only referring to new construction with no crime, then you'll have to go pretty far outside of downtown to find that on $50K. Even the aging, split-level land of North Hills is too pricey for that income (sales ~$190/sqft).

I don't think it is fair for one to expect first rate housing that is that far below the area's average household income ($78K). Think that's high? Try living in New York in D.C. Now are you wondering why so many wives work?

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Average is a useless number in this case. Median Household Income for Raleigh-Durham is $48,845. This is why I keep coming back to the approximately $50,000 number. It does not take a genius to see a precipitous drop-off in home prices from the Oakwood/Hayes Barton/Cameron Park level of 300-500k thousand down to the 30-90k level in east downtown. The gap, is in the middle.

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For affordable houses in the downtown area available now, my picks would be rehabs in Fuller Heights, South Saunders Street(Rosengarten Park), or the Caraleigh neighborhood. Several tracts around town are being redesigned to meet the demand for affordable urban single family houses. However, this will hinge on folks letting go of the north Raleigh zoning/setbacks and embrace 20+ units to the acre. It is possible to have a community of nice functional houses with courtyards on .05 acre lots.

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