In big liberal cities, the most politically acceptable form of new housing—apartments officially designated as affordable—isn’t sold to the highest bidder or rented to the first tenant willing to pay the going rate. It’s given out by lottery. This fact deserves a lot more scrutiny than it gets.
Instead of simply allowing enough apartment construction to keep up with employment and population growth, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities have restricted housing development but simultaneously offered developers tax credits, zoning changes, and other incentives to include below-market-rate units in their projects, which have in many cases been made available to the public via lottery.
Last year, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development oversaw drawings for 10,000 such affordable apartments, whose rents are capped so that tenants spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. For these units, the city received 6 million applications. In other words, households had a one-in-600 chance of winning each lottery they entered.
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.