Quote:
Originally Posted by Boffin
In Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty says: “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
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“Affordable Housing” does seem to be open to interpretation.
The government(s) do have numbers, which may or may not be somewhat reasonable depending on location, but it seems as if people use the term to describe a life style, not just four walls and a roof. Risking the wrath of the Thought Police—the term has become too political to have a lot of real meaning.
In large part it comes down to how responsible people are with their money. For some people, I imagine that an income of, say, $50,000 per year is not enough to support their imagined affordable housing coupled with what they spend above and beyond. For others, half that much is more than sufficient. I know a young woman who not only has her own apartment (cute one-bedroom) for which she pays market-rate rent, has subsidized health insurance through her work, is in her junior year in college (via online, University of Phoenix), receives no assistance of any kind, has a credit score of 814, and just recently bought a two-year-old Ford Escape—all on about $30,0000 per year.
Bottom line: people, in my opinion, might be able to afford housing that is totally adequate if they are disciplined and frugal in their spending habits.