Affordable housing is not just a collection of construction material and land costs. It’s a purse that must stretch to cover a rental or purchase . . . after any and all other essential costs have been plucked out. Food and utility costs are some obvious essentials.
This series of articles covers essential costs or benefits that might not seem so obvious, but nonetheless, depending on how they are structured, can turn affordable housing into unaffordable housing.
Transit Pay-By-Distance
Older, affordable inner city districts in many cities are being gobbled up piecemeal by gentrification and are no longer affordable. The necessity of a low-income walk to work is being transformed into the healthy privilege of a walk to work for the gentry.
Low income shelter-seekers, pushed into city outskirts and beyond, must now factor transit costs into their survival equation. There appears to be an affordable house in an distant suburb where job opportunities are few: how much will it cost to get from the affordable home to a low-income job?
The way transit is priced can have a significant impact on what appears to be affordable, compared to its cost when essentials such as transit are factored in.
Look more closely at what might appear to be affordable housing for a low income worker using Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in CURBED SAN FRANCISCO: The inequity of pay-by-distance transit in the Bay Area
