PRESERVING AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING

PRESERVING AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING
By Steve Wright

If homeownership is the American Dream, then lack of affordable rental housing is the American Nightmare.

For a huge percentage of Americans – those who are part of the increasing low-wage workforce, elderly, disabled, entry level professionals, even mid-level wage earners in expensive big cities – renting makes more sense that home ownership.

While the need for affordable rental housing has never been greater, the uphill battle to preserve existing affordable housing has never been steeper.

A number of factors – an endless maze of U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations, the lure of market rate rent earnings, high land values, perplexing local building codes – threaten to diminish an affordable rental housing inventory that already fails to meet the rising demand for it.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting a 10-year, $75 million initiative to preserve and improve affordable rental housing across the country.