Why isn't there enough affordable housing?

Reader comment on: Regulation and Inequality

Submitted by Andrew Terhune (United States), Nov 28, 2017 20:43

I own a second home in a county that has impact fees in the order of $25K per home. A perennial topic in the local paper is, "Why don't we have enough affordable housing?" This is in a county where homes costing in the millions are quite common. For those homes, $25K additional doesn't mean a lot. But for a home that is relatively affordable at, say $125,000, it can be the difference between affordable and unaffordable. Renters get hit too because the builder of rental housing has to pay these same fees which get built into the rents. The county's motivation is that this is an invisible tax - only the builders of housing who pay it directly see it. But builders aren't charities. They are simply collecting a tax that gets passed on to the purchasers.


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Title By Date
NYT: "the 1 percent" [31 words]Irwin ChusidNov 28, 2017 22:22
⇒ Why isn't there enough affordable housing? [138 words]Andrew TerhuneNov 28, 2017 20:43

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