Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What does affordable mean?

[Jared Frandson, MD (jfrandson]

Affordable can indeed be difficult to define, especially for developer
driven cohousing.  How to create it is also difficult.  It is a mix of
materials, site, locality, and unit mix.

For our development in Austin, the group very early on decided to use
local Housing initiative guidlines as a minimum standard. Safe, Mixed
Income, Accessible, Reasonably Priced and Transit Oriented(S.M.A.R.T.)
housing is a program by the city of Austin where at least 10 percent
of the units meet the "reasonably priced" standard, by serving
families at or below 80 percent of the Austin Area Median Family
Income and meet Green Builder standards.  It gives permitting process
benefits to new developments that qualify.

If you are in the pre-development phase and are discussing these
issues be sure to look to see if there are and state or municipality
housing initiatives to give you a benchmark, it has helped greatly in
our discussions on what we want, what we can afford and how expensive
we should build (not always the same).  Our units are priced from
about 90K for a 1bed 1 bath apartment to 220K for a 4 bed 2 bath
townhouse.

Jared.

On 9/11/06, Rob Sandelin <floriferous [at] msn.com> wrote:
> This word, affordable, seems to vary quite a bit in definition. I am not
> sure that there is a good definition either, so I would encourage folks who
> seek or ask about affordability to define that in terms of an upper dollar
> home price limit, therefore clarifying what you are really seeking. I would
> think sometime who defines affordable, simple living as being a home under
> $60,000 would be discouraged by somebody defining affordable as $240,000.
> Sure, if the other homes in your development cost $400,000 each , then $250K
> is a bargain, but it is still not necessarily affordable depending upon what
> you do for a living and how much debt you are willing to carry.
>
> At Sharingwood we have one, hand built shack of recycled scrounged materials
> that was built for free by the owner, on a lot he paid $20,000 for many
> years ago. We have another person who has acquired a lot from their parents,
> who also was intending to hand build a small, shack sized dwelling for under
> $5,000 in new material costs. Both of these shacks will use the commonhouse
> plumbing systems (at a small monthly surcharge). Both are small enough that
> they are considered non-code buildings. This is clearly simple and
> affordable living by most definitions but not reproducible, it is unlikely
> either of the two existing unbuilt lots will sell, if they ever go up for
> sale which is not currently the case,  at anything less than full market
> value which is probably around $90,000 at this point.
>
>
> Rob Sandelin
> Sharingwood Cohousing
> Naturalist, Writer
> The Environmental Science School
> http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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