What
Do You Think?
There seems to be a lot of confusion over the whole concept of
“affordable housing” and how those who do not support affordable housing
programs such as the State Housing Element, are bad people who do not care
about providing homes for lower income families, especially near where they
work. This could not be further from the truth, let me explain.
The state mandated Housing Element and programs like it are promoted as
the fair and equitable way to bring affordable housing to every community. The
way it works is that a developer gets together with the city or county and
commits to developing a parcel of land if the city or county agrees to rezone
it to high density so that the developer can build affordable units. The theory
is the more units you can put on say, one acre, the cheaper you can build a
housing project and then pass that savings on to the community in the form of
much lower than market rate pricing for homes - so far so good. But here is the
catch and it’s called “in lieu fees.”
In lieu fees are the fees that a developer pays to the city or county
in lieu of building any affordable housing at all on any particular proposed
housing project. So, as in the one acre example, the developer gets the high
density rezone he bargained for (say from one unit per acre to 30 units per
acre) so he can build the affordable housing, but then he turns around and
writes a check for some minuscule amount to the city or county in exchange for
being allowed to build all high density full market rate homes. So, it’s
goodbye affordable units - they never get built, not even one. These in lieu
fees vary from community to community but my experience has been that the
amount paid by the developer not to build affordable units is surpassed by
leaps and bounds with the increased profits that are generated on high density
full-market housing that would have otherwise not been possible on that
particular parcel of land.
I think that these types of programs are nothing but a scam to fool the
public into supporting them under the guise of taking care of those in real
need of an affordable place to live near where they work. Affordable housing is
not the objective of these programs – huge profits are. I also think that our
elected officials need to fight against the expansion and blind execution of
these types of housing programs that contain these “in lieu fees” and instead
focus on real affordable housing projects that can be built in a smart and
honest way.
What do you think?