Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s essay inspired by a provocative new book, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise, asked how and why a slum dies, based on the gradual and not—so-gradual elimination of London’s 1880 Old Nichol.
 

London, 1880
 
In today’s developed nations, slums are where, as the Times’ […]

 
Where do slums go to die?  And what kills them?
 
That question is raised by a provocative new book, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise.  Although not yet published in the States, and hence unavailable to Your Humble Blogger, it’s the subject of an interesting review in The […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1 and Part 2.]
 
So far our examination of the UK’s inclusionary zoning scheme, Section 106, has unearthed what we expected — that in a zero-sum game, negotiations are protracted, acrimonious, and coy.  Further, localities — rightly appreciating that equity extract from Section 106 agreements is their principal source of new municipal infrastructure […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Even before examining the specific practice, we’d expect a zero-sum-game form of inclusionary zoning to be beset by protracted negotiations and ongoing acrimony between developers and localities. 
 

Talking about you and me, and the games people play
 
We’d also expect a migration toward a homes-produced number and away from deep affordability, simply […]

Games are more fun when they’re positive-sum — and this applies very directly to affordable housing and inclusionary zoning.
 

Girls just wanna have sums!
 
Because affordable housing always costs money, some lucky stakeholder must fund the cost-value gap.  While this money ultimately is or derives from government, government often wriggles, seeking to find ‘off budget’ ways of […]