The High, High Price of Affordable Housing

By Joe Cortright, City Commentary, April 19, 2017

Why is affordable housing so expensive?

In many cities, affordable housing has a problem: it’s not affordable. California Governor Jerry Brown made that point again, emphatically, with his new state budget. He’s said that he’s not putting any new state resources into subsidizing affordable housing until state and local governments figure out ways to bring the costs down. Last year, opposition from labor and environmental groups blocked the governor’s proposal to exempt affordable housing from some key regulatory requirements. Brown had offered $400 million in additional state funds for affordable housing if that proposal was adopted. Now that money is off the table.

“We’ve got to bring down the cost structure of housing and not just find ways to subsidize it,” Brown said in his budget speech.

And the costs are substantial. In San Francisco, one of the largest all-affordable housing projects, 1950 Mission Street, clocks in at more than $600,000 per unit. That number isn’t getting any lower: new units in that city’s Candlestick Point development will cost nearly $825,000 each, according to recent press reports. Brown’s point is that at that cost per unit, its simply beyond the fiscal reach of California or any state to be able to afford to build housing for all of the rent-burdened households.

And while the problem is extreme in San Francisco, it crops up elsewhere. In St. Paul, affordable housing-mostly one bedroom units- in a renovated downtown building cost $665,000 per unit.

In Portland, newly elected Mayor Ted Wheeler has temporarily embargoed any further spending of the city’s recently improved $258 million affordable housing bond issue. Shortly before he took office, the Portland Housing Bureau committed to spending nearly 15 percent of the levy’s proceeds to acquire an existing 263 unit housing complex. The city will pay $51 million in total, about $193,000 per unit for the building. The cost of new construction tends to be even higher. Public projects often involve more elaborate design, LEED certification, additional public spaces and higher overhead costs.

More broadly, the case has been made that much publicly subsidized affordable housing costs much more to build that market rate housing. Private developers are able to build new multi-family housing at far lower cost. One local builder has constructed new one-bedroom apartments in Portland at cost of less than $100,000 a unit, albeit with fewer amenities and in less central locations that most publicly supported projects. In Portland, local private developer Rob Justus has proposed to build 300 apartments and sell them to the city for $100,000 each on a turn-key basis to be operated as affordable housing. Another possible cost savings measure: off-site construction. The University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center has a new report that explores the possibility for pre-fabricated, off-site construction to reduce construction costs.

Portland Mayor Wheeler voices the same concerns as California Governor Brown:

“We’ve added a lot of programs to affordable housing that may be socially desirable. But when the goal is to create the maximum number of new doors, we have to reduce costs and get more supply on the market as quickly as possible.”

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