Or better yet do both
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As long as the business of providing housing remains profit driven, you can be assured that new apartment complexes will be geared toward the luxury market. Cost of land compels developers to maximize their rents, and putting luxury finishing touches, spaces, and services into their buildings is how you do it.
The only tool available to mitigate those land costs is to go higher and spread out the land cost per unit over more units. Unfortunately, going higher will also command higher rent dollars as people will pay for views from those higher floors. Itâs quite the conundrum.
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Also important to note that you could get away from the higher land costs by building further out. I think our development pattern still revolves around this model.
Well that scenario doesnât work for Raleigh so what do you do now? Conundrum indeed.
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Well, for its part, the city can stop building suburban style public housing on expensive city center land. If platforming the car is going to be a defining feature of the public housing that the city builds, then it should be building that further from the city center in a more car centric context.
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So my friend lives in Grosvenor Gardens, the complex that the city purchased to âprotect affordable housingâ or something a while back. She said today she got a notice of rent going up 40%.
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Did that actually take place, the purchase? I see CASA was actually making the purchase with the city chipping in. Maybe it never took place or itâs still in progress.
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Wow, Iâm out of the loop but I am surprised to hear those are (were?) remotely affordable. Beautiful buildings in a prime location.
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I confirmed with her that the CASA purchase did go through at the beginning of the year. The property manager didnât change from VG Murray and Co. Itâs not clear whoâs responsible for the increase yet but she said rent was already adjusted upward in January after the purchase.
Sheâs running it down with both of them. She suspects income-based rent changes, which really doesnât work out for her due to extenuating circumstances. Could also be only certain units are marked for affordable housing (but she is in a studio which was historically below-market).
AFAIK thereâs no legal restrictions about any of this, so asking nicely and then maybe public shaming is about all weâve got.
Appears that enough of the residents complained to warrant them posting a new letter on peopleâs doors:
My friend worked at a non-profit for years and immediately pointed out that non-profits usually do run a deficit, supported by outside donations or government money.
On one hand these units were pretty well below market rates. On the other, isnât that kind of the point? The adjustment, anecdotally from her experience, makes this place not so much better than any other option⌠Her small, old, non-accessible studio is now over $1k.
6 years ago I had a nicer and larger âluxuryâ 1 bedroom for $900 on Centennial. With a washer/dryer! Of course, thatâs 6 years ago.
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The cost of everything in America has basically doubled over the last 5 years. Not sure why people would expect housing to be any different.
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Well as wages havenât been keeping up over the same amount of time so goes housing affordability.
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It seems on reflection that this was kind of a messaging mismatch. If itâs true that the original owners were basically taking a loss to provide affordable rent, but the end had come and the property needed to be sold, then CASA is basically doing damage control with the help of the city by trying to keep the structure itself in place in hopes that it can be maintained stably in the future.
On a larger scale this is probably a win (no teardown and reconstruction, one more ânon-luxuryâ complex still exists) but for existing residents benefitting from low rent which was basically insulated from the market (somehow) it surely feels like a betrayal after the organization got praise for affordability and their rent is going up dramatically.
I feel like it highlights the duality of âaffordable housingâ and how much trouble weâre already in. What CASA is doing is pretty reasonably âaffordable housingâ in respect to trying to stay at the lower end of the market. But the market itself is unaffordable for lots of people. The only way to make rent in this area affordable for most people is to be entirely irrational and âunsustainableâ from the perspective of the market.
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