Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Maintaining affordability

[David L. Mandel (dlmandel]

Sharon:
Your suggestions for building for less are actually good ones that should be
tried when possible, but that's not really where I was going with my
comment. As I described the other day, we "built at less than market rate"
by finding subsidies conditioned on having low income buyers. And as great
as that was initially, it has failed to maintain affordability in the long
term as long as sooner or later (and in our case, sooner than we expected),
resales are governed by the market. Even if people take all your good ideas
and others and build cheaply, resale prices will be a function of the market
unless kept from becoming so. For real affordability, housing needs to be
removed from the world of commodities. Achieving that on a large scale
requires a major societal transformation. But there are some ways -- limited
equity co-ops, land trusts owned by nonprofits, in which it can conceivably
be done now as cohousing (or not). I'm not deluded to think it's easy, but
it is possible.
David
Southside Park
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sharon Villines" <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 7:22 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Maintaining affordability


>
> On Dec 28, 2003, at 10:01 PM, David L. Mandel wrote:
>
> >     You presume that real estate is always a "good investment." In
> > fact, buy
> > at the wrong time and you can get badly burned. Many people have.
> >      If my housing costs less initially because it's not developed at
> > market
> > prices and I therefore don't have to service a loan with a big chunk
> > of my
> > income, I can invest the difference elsewhere to help secure my
> > retirement
> > and other future needs.
>
> If you can build at below market rates, go for it. I don't presume that
> real estate is a good investment -- many people including friends who
> are bankers and investors, do not believe that real estate is ever a
> good investment. They say only buy real estate if it is your home and
> you want to live there all your life. In that sense a home is always a
> good investment. But if you want to live in cohousing or to live
> anywhere that your home is securely yours, you pretty much have to
> purchase the home.
>
> Sharon
> -----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
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