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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I suppose our personal finance math may differ, but two married people making a combined 140 a yr or so, I wouldnt feel comfortable with a 700k house.    (thats on the low end by the way, the ones in Arlington ended up over 1M).   But lets assume 700k here.   You would need 140 for a down payment for an 80/20 mortgage.

Then you factor in property taxes, insurance, etc etc... no effing way two teachers or two nurses are swinging that.

Again-its a fairy tale story "we want affordable houses for teachers and nurses and cops!!"   (then they build 700-1M triplexes, that none of those people will actually buy or be able to afford).

Just admit that. [/quote]

New construction is always going to demand a premium. The issue isn't so much what the new units will cost, but what effect they will have on other units compared to maintaining the status quo.

Scarcity drives prices. More people competing for the same number of homes is going to keep driving prices up faster than incomes.[/quote]

Now we’ve reached the point in the conversation where the YIMBYs admit the program won’t help the people it was supposed to help but tell us not to worry because the effects will just trickle down. The problem with that approach is that very little actually does trickle down (most benefit gets booked as profit), making your approach an ineffective transmission mechanism for support to the middle class.

The other problem with your approach is that developers are much less likely to build while prices are falling, so when prices fall because of a supply shock, the effect is short lived. On top of that, your approach relies on having a supply shock to begin with, and cities that have experienced a supply shock did so only after rents went up way more than they have around here. Your approach is not a sustainable way to increase housing stock and it shouldn’t be a basis for policy. [/quote]

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