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The ordinance requiring a minimum of 20% affordable housing units amends Chapter 14 of the 1984 Detroit City Code, Community Development and creates Detroit's first Housing Trust Fund which will be used to address housing needs for residents with incomes at levels at or below 30% of area median income.
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And of the 20% required affordable housing, Sheffield's original proposal sought to require an income tiering that would have imposed 10% of them to be at 80% of the area median income; 5% at 60% of area median income; and 5% at 50% of the area median income.
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Today in Detroit low-income individuals have three options when it comes to renting. They all come with problems — namely a lack of actual availability. A person can live in public housing, which are units run by the Detroit Housing Commission. There are 3,340 units under the organization's purview. They are at 95% occupancy. The waiting list, which is currently closed, holds 5,760 individuals. When the list is open, it too can come with barriers. In January 2016, one public housing community opened its list. To apply one had to physically visit the building to get an application and then the completed application, which required original birth certificates, social security cards, proof of income and photo IDs for all adults, had to be “hand delivered” between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.
A second option is a housing voucher — formally known as Section 8 — which gives one a rental subsidy, which can then be used at any unit at which a landlord decides to accept it. The waiting list for the city's housing voucher program, which has been closed since 2014, has 6,000 people on it. This calendar year, 140 vouchers were issued, according to the Detroit Housing Commission.
Finally, one can look for so-called affordable housing. These are units that are built through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which gives developers tax subsidies in exchange for building a certain number of "affordable" housing units that accommodate those living below the Area Median Income [[AMI).
What complicates this latter option is the fact that determination of AMI includes outlying suburbs. In the case of Detroit, the AMI is based on the Detroit-Warren-Livonia metropolitan statistical area. The end results are inflated AMIs, which skew out of the favor of actual Detroiters. While the AMI of a single person is $48,000 in the Detroit AMI, the true median income in Detroit is $28,000 — a 71% difference.