‘Mixed’ income housing projects are currently a popular home-building fad(?) that appears to feature governments at all levels getting truly ‘stuck in’ to solving growing affordability problems in many countries. ‘Mixed’ is increasingly popular because it allows free-market developers and governments to display themselves playing happily in the same construction sandbox.
However, the framework of these public private partnerships increasingly offers a whiff of fraudulence. In what way?
The agreements certainly seem to satisfy developers who build what is usually the lion’s share of the housing units, which provides them with a profit. No confusion there!
But they supposedly represent good examples of how public demands for more affordable housing are being met by responsible governments.
Unfortunately, governments often don’t participate in any way that reflects the need for affordable housing. What percentage of a modern mixed housing project is be given over to TRULY affordable housing — that is, rent geared to income housing? Masquerading as truly affordable, governments has created another group with the vague and deliberately confusing term simply described as: ‘affordable.’ In this case, we are looking at free market housing that is cheaper by some arbitrarily chosen amount: another (albeit lower) profit centre for the developer.
And what of the truly affordable housing? Perhaps 10% of the project — say 12 homes out of 120? We’ve recently reported a project with 3% affordable housing1. Isolated deals push these kinds of fractions upwards towards 15% and even 20%.
But are these numbers going to redress the deepening housing crisis that is threatening more and more people with homelessness?
We’ve been on the lookout for a free market/truly-affordable housing balance, carefully considered by government research, that looks to truly redress the growing housing crisis.
We think we’ve found one! Read more at TheMAYOR.eu: Social housing will form 40% of future urban development in Copenhagen
