[LuvNH]

Originally Posted by Craig Vernon

The Villages were very affordable three to four years ago. The entry level patio villas were below 200k, the cottage series were low 200k, Courtyard villas were below 250k and designers were 500k with a pool on a golf course. My how things change in just a few years. Many homes in the Villages are second homes and they are giving way to rental properties as the value and affordability goes away. Six percent a year for 25 years was good, 50-100% in three years is not and must correct or I fear we fifty somethings will be forced to go elsewhere.

18 yrs ago, when we moved to TV, a beautiful patio villa cost $130,000. My girlfriend had one. Her husband passed and she sold the villa for over $200,000. They were a great buy in those days. I have been told that before I moved to TV they sold for under $100,00,

[EdFNJ]

Maybe this will help: What is affordable housing?


Partial clip from that article:

What Is Affordable Housing?
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordable housing as housing where the occupant is paying 30% or less of the(ir) gross income on total housing, including utilities.

The phrase “affordable housing” is also colloquially used as a general term to refer to housing assistance for low-income individuals, including housing vouchers or housing designated for residents below a certain income for the area.

While 30% of gross income may be considered the baseline to determine whether housing is affordable, many households are forced to spend much more than that for their home and utilities, and they may or may not be receiving housing assistance to cover the high costs. Very low affordability is considered 60%, says Arica Young, associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, affordability is even worse. “There are families that spend 80% of their income on housing. … It’s really shocking,” Young says.

[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.”

[Worldseries27]

Originally Posted by luvnh

i think this post is thrown at me. Affordable housing means nothing to someone who can afford the rents and the down payments required to find a place to live, but it melans a a hell of a lot to people who are forced to livle in their cars because their circumstances do not allow the ability to pay rent or save for a down payment.

If you do not know what affordable housing means you need to get out of the bubble and see what is happening in the real world.

didn't we all leave the " real world 🌎 " for the cocoon of the bubble

[Sandy and Ed]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

$650 per month for a one-bedroom apartment

$15/hour x 35 hours/week x 50 weeks = $26,250
$26,250 x 30 percent is about $650 per month

And, anyone who cannot make a 20 percent down payment, should not buy a house.

Great answer. Means that you would need to have a roommate making that same amount to meet rent each month.

[dewilson58]

Definition of Affordable Housing: The Villages.

Selling new homes as fast as they can build them....................must be affordable.

[MandoMan]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

I understand the math but when I look online to see what rent is in the area, I don't see anything starting at even twice that much. While I didn't spend a lot of time looking, $1,500/month seems to be the minimum.

The problem seems to be that the housing that gets built isn't "affordable" and housing that would be "affordable" gets the NIMBY treatment. Maybe that will change with all the new developments being approved.

You are right. The link below to the Housing and Urban Development web site explains how Section 8 housing works. If a landlord agrees to having “low income housing,” the low-income family pays 30% of their income (up to $650 a month) for the residence, even if it is brand new and normally rents for $1,500 a month or more, and we the people pay the rest through what we give to HUD. Probably the other people in the apartment house are also eating part of the cost. People need places to live, and we shouldn’t knock hard-working folks who work for minimum wage and can’t help it that rents are so much higher. It’s not easy to build new houses or apartments that meet the building code but can rent for $650 a month. If we doubled the minimum wage, more people could pay more for rent, but then we’d have to pay far more for what we buy. There was a time when the housing for people doing “service jobs” was an attic room or a little cabin out back or a sharecropper’s cabin. Today, that might be an old trailer. But if you buy an old trailer for $30,000 these days, a place to put it might cost you $650 a month. But people don’t want to live like that. They want a nice new place for that amount. It’s not an easy situation.

[LuvNH]

Originally Posted by dewilson58

Definition of Affordable Housing: The Villages.

Selling new homes as fast as they can build them....................must be affordable.

You are so right, it is affordable if you have a home to sell, if you are old enough to have a pension, if you are collecting SS or if you have reached the age where your investments are showing promise.

When you are a young person starting out in life affordable housing is a dream.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

I understand the math but when I look online to see what rent is in the area, I don't see anything starting at even twice that much. While I didn't spend a lot of time looking, $1,500/month seems to be the minimum.

The problem seems to be that the housing that gets built isn't "affordable" and housing that would be "affordable" gets the NIMBY treatment. Maybe that will change with all the new developments being approved.

Originally Posted by MandoMan

You are right. The link below to the Housing and Urban Development web site explains how Section 8 housing works. If a landlord agrees to having “low income housing,” the low-income family pays 30% of their income (up to $650 a month) for the residence, even if it is brand new and normally rents for $1,500 a month or more, and we the people pay the rest through what we give to HUD. Probably the other people in the apartment house are also eating part of the cost. People need places to live, and we shouldn’t knock hard-working folks who work for minimum wage and can’t help it that rents are so much higher. It’s not easy to build new houses or apartments that meet the building code but can rent for $650 a month. If we doubled the minimum wage, more people could pay more for rent, but then we’d have to pay far more for what we buy. There was a time when the housing for people doing “service jobs” was an attic room or a little cabin out back or a sharecropper’s cabin. Today, that might be an old trailer. But if you buy an old trailer for $30,000 these days, a place to put it might cost you $650 a month. But people don’t want to live like that. They want a nice new place for that amount. It’s not an easy situation.

Second quote first-----More Robin Hood/Nanny State/Income redistribution crap. Taxpayers paying rent for others in sec 8 housing. Other tenants subsidizing the people in the next apartment. Double minimum wages so everybody subsidizes them through higher prices. "People don’t want to live like that?"----well if that's all they can afford, then that is what they should get. When "welfare", aka "the dole", was started by FDR in the 30's, you got a subsistence living, nothing more. A cold water flat with shared bathrooms, no amenities, and a ticket to the government surplus bread and cheese line. People would take any, yes ANY job to get off "the dole". It was a social stigma and people back then had personal pride. Now, it has become a generational way of life, and we bend over backwards to give handouts that often exceed the income of hard working people. We hand out EBT cards so the recipients aren't "embarrassed" at the supermarket by handing in those food stamps. My father remembers having exactly 3 cents in the cupboard on a Monday that had to last until Friday---and my grandmother wouldn't even think about taking a handout.

I see the problem as a strict cut off in transfer payments once a certain income is reached. Instead, I would institute a sliding scale, starting with that subsistence living of the 30's for doing nothing. As you work and earn money, phase out the handouts, but always make the total much better than sitting on your butt doing nothing. Give equal credits for education. At least make an attempt to end the "welfare state" and turn at least some of the people into productive net taxpayers. And for those bleeding hearts out there, I'm not talking about the disabled or developmentally challenged. But I do not consider alcoholism or drug addiction a "disability"----I'd find a job for those people, but I doubt they'd like it.

For the first quote, yes it always will get the "NIMBY" treatment. Why? Easy, look at them crime rate and the appearance of such housing. Nobody who worked and paid for their home wants to be next to that.

End of rant

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by LuvNH

You are so right, it is affordable if you have a home to sell, if you are old enough to have a pension, if you are collecting SS or if you have reached the age where your investments are showing promise.

When you are a young person starting out in life affordable housing is a dream.

Yes, as it was in my generation, and the generation before. Young people just starting out don't get to live at the top of the food chain, today's generation seems to want to start out where their grandparents worked 40 years to get. I wasn't able buy a house until I was 28, and didn't buy a new house until I was 55. And Mommy and Daddy weren't likely to subsidize me. So I'll pass on tears for today's youth.

[Santiagogirl]

Found these statistics for Sumter Co on census.gov site, referring to either 2020 or the period 2017-2021 (go to their website for further details):
Population as of 04/01/2020: 129,752
Number of households: 61,441
Persons/household: 1.93
Persons 65+: 58.2%
Persons 16+ in civilian labor: 24.2%
Total employment: 27,829
Mean travel time to work: 27.4 minutes
Per capita income (2021 $s): $63,323
Income in past 12 months 2017-2021): $39,922
Persons in poverty: 9.5%
Housing units (07/01/2021): 79,678
Median gross rent: $1,055
Median select monthly owner costs with a mortgage: $1,374

In Sumter County, the housing supply appears to have roughly balanced out and was fairly affordable just a few years ago. This is no longer the case. The recent & ongoing rapid growth in & around The Villages is going to require the support of even more workers, who presumably do not want a lengthy commute. As much as I hate to see our lovely rural surroundings bulldozed to build more apartment buildings, where else are people going to live? Better to embrace the change, make sure building standards are high, and pay attention that associated services like healthcare, schools & transportation don't fail due the increased strain. Now more than ever Villagers need to pay attention to who we elect to local offices, as well as the decisions they are making which will affect us all.

[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

$650 per month for a one-bedroom apartment

$15/hour x 35 hours/week x 50 weeks = $26,250
$26,250 x 30 percent is about $650 per month

And, anyone who cannot make a 20 percent down payment, should not buy a house.

When was the standard workweek shortened to 35 hours? Also you're not accounting for taxes. The $26,250 ($2187 per month) that is quoted is not take home pay.

And when was the standard of the percentage of wages that should go toward a mortgage go from 25% to 30%.

My first few jobs had pain vacation to I was paid for 52 weeks. I also often worked a second part time job to be able to afford things that I wanted.

Words often don't mean anything. In this case affordable can be translated to lower priced, but that doesn't mean that the homes are affordable to everyone.

It's an absurd or at least a very loose term really.

[rsmurano]

Housing in the villages is pretty cheap compared to other places. We sure don’t need section 8 housing anywhere close to the villages. You would think that people would be happy who bought here years ago that their property values have gone way up. Property values have gone way up in other parts of the country too so if you would have to sell here to move somewhere else, you sure hope your gains will match the gains other states have seen.

[ThirdOfFive]

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.”

“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.

[Whitley]

Affordable housing today is a far cry from what many of us faced when we purchased our first homes
Home prices to median household income ratio.
In 1970 a home was 4.5 years x median household income
1970 : 4.5 in years
1980 : 4.6
1990 : 4.62
2000 : 4.34
2010 : 5.3
2020 : 5.71
2023 : 7.58