Demolitions Dire for Poor Amid Affordable-Rent Gap: Economy

[Purveyor]

By Jeanna Smialek and Carlos Torres - Jan 13, 2014

Hector Pineda spends 60 percent of his income renting a $1,500-a-month apartment for his family in Alexandria, Virginia. With housing around him slated to be torn down and replaced by pricier units, the 33-year-old cook worries his rent will go up or his building too will be demolished.

In the neighborhood where Pineda lives with his wife and their two sons, redevelopment will claim many of the area’s 2,500 affordable housing units, starting as early as this year, said Derek Hyra, an associate professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech and a member of the Alexandria Planning Commission.

While the city and developers have pledged to provide 800 affordable apartments, Pineda says he expects many of his neighbors will have to move to find lower rents.

“This project is for people with money,” said Pineda. “I, working to clean homes, in a restaurant, can pay $2,000 to $3,000 for an apartment? Never.”

The cheapest housing units across the nation are the most likely to be demolished, and new construction typically commands higher rents, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Meanwhile, foreclosures that soared after the housing bubble burst in 2007 turned thousands of former homeowners into renters, heating up competition for affordable units.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/demolitions-dire-for-poor-as-affordable-rent-gap-grows-economy.html

[blkmusclmachine]

1. ,

,

[redqueen]

2. K&R

[Warpy]

3. They won't be happy until the city centers are full of glittering glass towers

filled with yuppies and everybody who does the shitwork to keep those yuppies able to work their 50 hour weeks (like Mr Pineda) is going to be in a ring of tarpaper shacks around the city.

Boston in the 70s made landlords set aside a percentage of affordable units in their buildings, available through a lottery. They'd demolished the funky but vibrant West End with a promise of better housing for the residents and the developer put up Charles River Park, instead, a yuppie warren of expensive and featureless buildings surrounded by empty land, no community allowed.

Those affordable units didn't stay that way for long.

We can do better than this. We have to do better than this.