Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable housing

[Reede Stockton (commercial]

yep, that's the $64,000 question (showing my age...)

I don't pretend to know the answer, but I tend to think alternative
financing is the key - that's why I think public banking may be necessary.
Somehow, the cost of the initial investment needs to be spread over a long
enough period of time that the founding group doesn't sacrifice everything
for the folks that come along later.  That's really the purpose of bond
financing in public works, schools, etc.  Somehow, we need a way to
leverage bond-type financing for startup costs.  Commercial lenders will
never be amenable to that, so the only option for this type of financing at
scale is publicly-backed financing of some sort.

It will require a change in public policy to backstop this sort of
financing as a public good.  Something along the lines of publicly backed
financing for LEHCs - maybe roll in other types of cooperatives as well,
broadening the support base.  I think you can make a pretty convincing case
that the effect of slowing down overheated real estate markets so teachers,
nurses, etc can stay in a community is a valuable public good.

It's definitely a big lift to work on this sort of public policy change,
but it's worth the effort in my opinion.

Reede

On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 6:39 PM, Tiffany Lee Brown <magdalen23 [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> re: http://www.theselc.org/homeownership_is_dead
>
> PRECs sound like a great idea. but how do you get that first giant chunk of
> land set aside, invested in, funded? is there a model that could combine
> some of the greed/investment mentality we have in our housing with the idea
> of not allowing gentrification to drive up real estate prices? could there
> be some sort of gradation, to encourage investors/developers to help make
> this happen? show them a small amount of fast profit that could be made
> from their initial investment, and then on an ongoing basis, the homes are
> owned by the collective?
>
> and if the only chance that most everyday, middle-class people have of
> investing their money and seeing a return on it is the home they live in
> --- how do we change that reality? most of us still want to "get ahead,"
> e.g. we like to fantasize about having enough retirement that we won't be
> eating dog food and having to skip our expensive heart medicine when we're
> older. most of us cannot afford to pay rent/mortgage AND then also invest
> in something else substantial. i know my family, which has extensive
> medical bills, could never pull that off. the only way we paid off our
> debts and were able to move someplace healthier was by selling our house in
> a neighborhood that's gotten really hot. if all our money was going to
> day-to-day living (such as a co-op in which we won't ever see any return),
> what would we do?
>
> so confusing.
>
>
> tiffany
>
>
> tiffany lee brown
>
> editor, plazm magazine
> director, new oregon arts & letters
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 4:59 AM, Fred-List manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Christian Stalberg <christian [at] naturalintelligence.us>
> > is the author of the message below.  It was posted by
> > Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
> > due to a format problem.
> > --------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------
> >
> > Y’all might enjoy this article: Homeownership is Dead! Long Live the
> > Permanent Real Estate Cooperative!
> > http://www.theselc.org/homeownership_is_dead
> >
> > Regards,
> > _
> >
> > Christian Stalberg
> > Community Incubator
> > Tel. 415.942.3325
> > http://communityincubator.net
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> > http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> >
> >
> >
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