New affordable housing coming to neighborhood near Henry Ford Hospital

[Airforceguy]

New affordable housing coming to neighborhood near Henry Ford Hospital

A mixed-income housing development is planned for a Detroit neighborhood slated for massive institutional investment.Developers and city officials broke ground Monday on a new 27-unit apartment development, Merrill Place II, located just north of Henry Ford Hospital in the Virginia Park neighborhood.
The project comes as the broader area around Henry Ford Health's campus prepares for significant redevelopment, as the Detroit-based health system ramps up for a $2.5 billion overhaul of its facilities in the area.
The Merrill Place development, located on a vacant lot along Seward Avenue west of the Lodge/M-10 expressway, is a project from S&S Development Group, headed by Sauda Ahmad-Green. The developer previously did another small development in the same neighborhood. "It's incredibly rewarding to give back to the neighborhood that raised me by creating affordable housing options for Detroit residents," Ahmad-Green said in a news release from the city. "Virginia Park and New Center are such vibrant community hubs, so I'm excited to be developing housing that offers Detroiters easy access to such vital amenities."

The $12 million project will have a total of 27 apartments, consisting of nine, one-bedroom units and 18 two-bedrooms. Another 14 of the units will be reserved for those making 60% of the area median income, or about $39,780, according to figures from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-e...-virginia-park

[Danny]

When I see and hear the words " affordable housing" I means its not subsidized. just gentrified high rents.

[Hypestyles]

needs to show up elsewhere too.

[Richard]

When I see and hear the words " affordable housing" I means its not subsidized. just gentrified high rents.

That’s the key part that they like to leave out - What is the time frame that the affordable part has to remain, before they can be switched to high end rents .

Usually 3-5 years

Not sure about the other fun stuff like tax capture etc.

Thats what HUD is doing though,not building projects anymore,it’s all contracted out to developers,they have to retain X amount of units as affordable,which creates a loss so in exchange HUD funds the building and requires you keep the rates for 3-5 years after that they are out of there and replaced with market rate.

It’s a trade off,HUD gets affordable housing and the developers get a building as payment.

Thats why every project in the city for the last couple of years has affordable attached to it.

[oladub]

When I see and hear the words " affordable housing" I means its not subsidized. just gentrified high rents.

Corporations are buying up housing. "According to The Wall Street Journal in 2021, 200 corporations are aggressively purchasing tens of thousands of homes, and even entire neighborhoods, and jacking up the rents. For example, a Blackrock creation called Invitation Homes merged with another outfit and as of 2021, this conglomerate owned 80,000 rental homes. In 2012, this outfit, also known as Treehouse Homes, went on a buying spree where they were purchasing $150 million dollars worth of homes every week—up to $10 billion."

Corporations that rent out housing want government policies that expand the population base and drive out smaller competititors. Enter government which links up with corporate house builders to provide "affordable housing". Although largely at fault for making homes expensive, e.g. open borders and unnecessarily expensive building codes and zoning requirements, government creates "affordable housing" using tax money or increased debt because otherwise low to middle income families have been priced out of the housing market. The polite term for the collusion of big government and big corporations is corporatism. The losers in all this are taxpayers who do subsidize the construction of "affordable housing". The winners are the recipients of "affordable housing, corporate profits and bureaucrats needed to run programs.

The first time I ever heard the term, was when I was living in California. Marin County, CA, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge was so affluent that teachers, plumbers, firemen, etc. could not afford to live there but the rich people needed their services. So Marin County gathered federal and State money to build housing for its workers. It was sort of like the old company towns like Ferndale, CA [[Palco Lumber) or Falconbridge, ON [[Falconbridge Nickel), where the companies built rental housing and a company store for its workers. In Marin County, the alternative would have required wage increases so workers could afford to live in that county. So, in a way, the State and federal government subsidies helped the rich who didn't have to pay for all the cheaper housing or higher wages.

[Richard]

^ after an audit in California they discovered only 20% of the funds collected through taxpayer,state and federal funding actually went into providing affordable housing.

You make money off of the poor and not the rich.