Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Article on SF affordable housing project.....

[Fred-List manager (fholson]

Noah Brod <noahbrod [at] gmail.com>
is the author of the message below.  It was posted by Fred of
the Cohousing-L management team <cohousing-l-owner [at] cohousing.org>
due to a format issue.

--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------
Here's a non-paywalled link.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2Fsf%2Farticle%2FO
ne-affordable-home-in-S-F-costs-750-000-to-17247489.php

I thought that article was frustrating
because it starts out by implying that the high cost of housing is "red
tape associated with taking public funds."  But then they reveal this
for-profit developer's "secret"  which is:

  In a city where an affordable unit can cost $750,000 to build, Toboni
  is hoping to build for less than $350,000 a unit. The cost savings
   come in part from the land as the Affordability Project was able to
  buy the parcel for $3 million, or $30,000 a door, about a 90% discount
  from what other land has sold for in San Francisco.

(and then not employing unionized labor to build as well).

Quite disingenuous to paint non-profit affordable housing developers as
inefficient when the big innovation to cost cutting here is "get the land
for free and underpay the builders."