Another way to provide affordable housing?

This is ludicrous. (courtesy of WVIR (no longer available))

Caravati visited Richmond on Wednesday for the third time in two weeks. He’s pushing an amendment to the City’s Charter that would make developers set aside parts of their projects as low- and moderate-income housing. Caravati says the city has had some success partnering with developers but now, “they’re just not answering the call there and hopefully this will be another inducement to get them to build more affordable units for those families that can’t quite afford it in a very expensive city.”

If the developers “aren’t answering the call” why doesn’t the City go after the employers for not “answering the call” to pay their employees more? (I know about the Living Wage (archived: 2007), but even that is not sufficient) The median sales price for a house in Charlottesville is almost $250k; “affordable housing” would make developers set the prices at around $200k. What do you think will happen to the prices of the other houses?

Neil Williamson of the Free Enterprise Forum responds:

“I consider the other ten buyers the ones that won the lottery and won the opportunity to have the below-market cost house and the other 90 are the ones that subsidized it,” Williamson said.

From the City’s website (no longer available):

Affordable Housing is defined, for the purpose of this policy, as those houses affordable to the sixty – seventy percent of the City population that have household incomes at or below 80% of the 2004 metropolitan area median household income of $63,700 for a family of four. For 2004, the maximum affordable home for purchase (by those making 0-80% of the median area household income of $63,700) would be approximately $218,300, using the latest VHDA limit, and maximum housing costs (rent and utilities) for tenants would be $796 …

The intent may be good, the method is not. Penalizing developers may make some “feel good,” but it’s not right. Nor is it right to penalize those who can legitimately afford homes in the are. The solution to the affordable housing crisis is out there somewhere. This is just not it.

How does one regulate the free market?