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SHERIDAN SWAP |
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Session 4: 'Housing 201'- Affordability and Forms of OwnershipThe fourth visioning session began by providing attendees with detailed information about the state of affordable housing in New York City today. Participants learned that nearly a quarter of New York City residents are using half of their annual income to pay rent and most new units built are selling at market rate. On average, developing housing in New York costs an astounding $300,000 per unit, due to scarcity of land, hard costs such as construction, and soft costs such as insurance fees. Attendees also learned about the “area median income” (AMI), or the midpoint income where half of area wage earners have salaries higher than the median, and half have salaries lower than the median. The AMI for a New York City household is $40,000 per year. Thus, an extremely low-income household is making around $20,000 a year, and a middle-income household is making approximately $100,000 per year. Equipped with this knowledge, participants were asked to work together to devise a housing plan for a building, wherein higher income residents would be subsidizing the lower income residents. Using this model, it became clear that it would be necessary to have many more high income residents to subsidize relatively few low income residents. This exercise was used to demonstrate how difficult it is to build affordable housing but it encouraged attendees to become problem solvers. Relevant Power Point Presentations in pdf form Read about the other Visioning Sessions
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