Affordable Housing: What is it?

Affordable housing is like courtesy in that often we are made most aware of its value by experiencing its absence. The problems that accompany a shortage of affordable housing afflict far more people than just the renters who cannot find a lease they can afford. Without it, existing businesses struggle to hire, economic development stagnates, and existing community residents get fewer and progressively less-appetizing options from which to choose where they live, work, and raise their families. Young people grow up and leave their community rather than stay, draining valuable talent and potential from a community and essentially starting the whole vicious cycle back from square one.

To avoid this, Virginia needs to jumpstart the construction of a large amount of apartment housing as soon as possible at a variety of price points. That represents a huge challenge politically, financially, and socially. Even the most basic conversations about affordable housing involve ambiguous terminology, fraught local politics, and labyrinthine bureaucratic process— starting with how we define “affordable housing.” The term itself is packed with far more controversy than the average American even realizes.

Let’s start with a foundational question: “affordable” to whom?

One of the first questions that pops to mind discussing affordable housing is also somewhat complex to answer. The prevailing metric by which policy judges whether housing is “affordable” or not is Area Median Income, (AMI).