"There isn't any. There still won't be any. You're all fucked."

Stop calling it affordable housing, for one.

Fuck you, MaineHousing.

One of my new neighbors works for MaineHousing - they paid 750K for a sprawling three bedroom house, which the last owners bought for 400K a few years earlier. It's kind of funny to imagine this guy - with his fleet of Mercedes and Range Rovers out front - setting up in one of his spare rooms to write papers on affordable housing.

It also explains why this outlook report seems so out of touch, repeatedly using establishment reasoning to explain away the rapidly increasing costs of living. According to MaineHousing, high energy costs are a result of the Russian war, high rental costs are a result of inflationary pressures on landlords, increased evictions are due to landlords removing tenants from units to renovate them, and increased homelessness is due to a better way of counting the unsheltered.

By that logic, I'm sure if you asked their thoughts on the rising price of eggs, they'd tell you the high prices are due to the avian flu, or whatever the news said that day. Greed is hardly acknowledged in this report, despite being proven by data to be a major contributor to price increases across the board.

Why? They recently started switching over to adapting this terminology over "low-income housing" because of the stigma.

What term should they use instead?

I'm not going to get into the political semantics of the terminology, but it's simple matter of the metrics they're using not even beginning to crack the threshold of affordable. It's all a smoke and mirrors game to the people writing these reports.

I think the pain is that it’s called “affordable” and yet still out of the reach of many

But the rentals they offer are affordable. What a tenant pays is literally based on a percentage of their income..

The Affordable Homeownership Program is brand new, of course it hasn't begun to crack the threshold.
Their rentals however have absolutely made a significant dent, and helped Maine house families that wouldn't otherwise find any. These are based on tenant income (therefore, quite affordable).

Subsidized Section 8 housing is one type of affordable housing, and I think that’s what you’re thinking of. The waiting list for those is years long. I got on it when my kid was 12 and got called for an apartment after her 18th birthday, when I no longer qualified for family housing.

There is also “affordable housing” through tax credit programs for developers. This type of housing is often unaffordable to people who are very low income.

I think you're misunderstanding what MaineHousing does. The Section 8 wait list being years long is regrettable, but isn't their fault.. their entire purpose is to assist developers creating more affordable housing units (typically not single-family homes). MaineHousing doesn't build the housing themselves. The reason we haven't had much development is because there isn't enough money in it for developers, which is why Maine actually recently passed its own affordable housing credit to piggy back off of the Federal to spur more developments.

The affordable housing through tax credit program for developers is absolutely available to people who are low income- but when you mention very low income, it depends on the project. The minimum set aside requirements for units based on income is typically some blended rate. These developments are not made to shelter the homeless, just workers who earn less than median income. Whether that's someone earning 50% of the median income or 60% depends on the project and its unit split- it varies.

I'm saying the metrics they use to determine affordability are flawed and misleading. Like using median income, for example.

I completely agree that the government statistics on income in general are horribly inaccurate and dated. MaineHousing uses market rate, size, utility cost, and other things in addition to median income to determine their rental rates, but their formula could probably be improved or updated.

Ok

"Affordable" is starting to become a subjective term as the days go by. Now you can't read an article about affordable housing without asking "okay but how affordable?"

Yeah, it really depends on the context it's used and affordable for who. It can also sometimes be determined based on income, local housing prices, government policies, etc. which can vary from place to place.

Our "build to zero" plan is going well I see. We have built to zero houses!

Actually, in 10 years 85% of boomers will be dead.