Craig Miller will be utterly shocked by this, but I agree with him that "affordable housing" needs to be better defined. I've seen some definitions thrown around - 50% of MMI, 30% of MMI - we need to adopt one and stick to it or we'll never get around the concern Craig raised that in many minds, "housing isn't affordable because I can't live where I want to" nor will we be able to solve the problems pointed out by Kate Carey about how affordable housing seems to mean really cruddy living conditions.
Now back to my normal disagreeing with Craig. :-) He points out a significant increase in vacancies and says "the shortage is over" - my question is: What happened to all those people? Did they move out to the 'burbs? Are they young folks who were forced to move back with their parents? Are they now living on the streets because they lost their jobs and couldn't pay the rent? Just sharing numbers about increased vacancies don't tell me anything unless we know WHY vacancies have increased. I checked the link Craig suggested and it worked fine for me. There was quite a bit of information listed besides some average rent prices, such as: * Average rents increased on the south side by 2.6% from 1998 to 1999, compared to a 2% increase in inflation. * More than 192,000 renter households in Chicago pay more than the recommended 30% of household income towards rent. A third of those families spend more than 50% of their income for rent. * An estimated 67,000 to 70,000 renter households in Chicago live in substandard housing (plumbing, heating, or other serious maintenance problems). * Between 47,500 and 48,700 renter households in Chicago live in overcrowded units. * In Chicago, there are 35,000 households on the waiting list for Housing Choice Vouchers (the new name for the restructured federal Section 8 tenant-based housing assistance). * Approximately 15,000 different people stayed in a homeless shelter in Chicago sometime in 1998. An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people slept on the street in Chicago sometime during that year. In other words, it's not exactly all peaches and cream in the Windy City. It's also interesting to note that this data is for 1998 and 1999, or during those purported economic boom years when everybody was supposed to be making out like bandits - or maybe it was just the landlords? Mark Snyder - sure am glad I own my house! Ward 1/Windom Park [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
