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Try your hand to define Affordable Housing — Brooklynian

Try your hand to define Affordable Housing

wirenut
wirenut
edited November -1 in Crown Heights/Prospect Lefferts Gardens
I was going to ask in the "stair collapse" post but I figured it was going off-topic

So I made a new one.

Comments

  • hamilton
    hamilton

    Subject: $$$rent$$$

    Affordable housing is when you and four strangers can afford the rent.
  • form
    form
    When you make more then $100k/year and can afford rent in the city...
  • MOD
    MOD
    Living with your parents :P
  • rtraindweller
    rtraindweller
    Mamacita wrote: Living with your parents :P
    or having a killer trust fund. :P
  • shishkab
    shishkab
    rtraindweller wrote: [quote=Mamacita]Living with your parents :P
    or having a killer trust fund. :P

    or killing your parents for their trust fund
  • rtraindweller
    rtraindweller
    shishkab wrote: [quote=rtraindweller][quote=Mamacita]Living with your parents :P
    or having a killer trust fund. :P

    or killing your parents for their trust fund

    oh snap!
  • eptp
    eptp
    i think its usually defined as 30% of household income. that means that if you work full-time for $7 an hour, its pretty hard to find affordable housing. Your rent would have to be $350/mo.

    what if you work part time, and throw in a couple of kids? It would be almost impossible. I'm amazed anyone can do it.
  • armchair_warrior
    armchair_warrior
    i would say bensonhurst has affordable housing. 800-1200 for 1-2 br single person can handle it.
  • x-brooklynite
    x-brooklynite
    armchair_warrior wrote: i would say bensonhurst has affordable housing. 800-1200 for 1-2 br single person can handle it.
    But can african americans who can afford to live there do so without being racially slurred, beaten and killed?
  • anonymous
    anonymous
    I found some affordable condos that are cheaper than renting:
    Brookyn Luxury Condos from $179,000 = www.nycaffordableliving.com

    Has anyone been inside these yet?
  • whatchuwant
    whatchuwant
    Those "affordable houses" aren't affordable necessarily - its based on your mortgage payment and that all depends on how much you put down. The more recent (and more risky) style of mortgages is what you've been hearing about lately, those sub-prime ones. Dangerous stuff!

    All those people that actually "bought" the idea that you could own a home with "no money down" were seriously delusional and the lenders that convinced them to do it should all go straight to hell. After getting sucked into the dream, now many are faced with losing the homes that they never really owned in the first place. That's why they've put this "freeze" on the interest rates because now a lot of people are in it deep.

    Remember: it's only affordable IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT.

    20% people.....20%.
  • wirenut
    wirenut
    On the other hand, most who got one of these "set you up to fail - no down payment" mortgages are defaulting in the first year or two, while paying only the begining teaser rate of interest.

    They haven't really paid in any equity and therefore, the only thing they lost is the closing expenses. If they had stayed renting, there monthly outlay probably was about the same. That's why it is so enticing.

    Compare that to a person who put 20% down and has been paying a conventional mortgage for 15 years and then suddenly has an illness (or losses his/her job) and falls behind and looses the house.

    The person in the second example looses a whole lot more, but no one seem to care about them.
  • naif
    naif
    On another hand altogether...

    Don't give up if you can't scrape together the 20%. If you are otherwise qualified and can manage 10%, the city and federal governments have programs that will provide for additional downpayment and closing costs. I had a great experience as a first-time homebuyer with NHS. Their homebuyer's education course not only qualifies you for forgiveable loans and preferential terms on mortgages, their counselors also act as advocates for you in avoiding predatorial lending. I secured a fixed rate mortgage via a major bank with only 10% to chip in. With the income based funding and community commitment mortgage I got, I was able to put down a further 5% and avoid having to pay for private mortgage insurance.

    Check them out at nhsnyc.org or via the nyc.gov website. As there are plenty of coops in the neighborhood priced at under 200K, it's still a good time to buy if you are financially stable. My own opinion, however, is that you should avoid those dodgy looking new constructions like the ones in the link!
  • whatchuwant
    whatchuwant
    True that, Wirenut.

    And Naif- excellent info. Welcome to "the Board."
  • armchair_warrior
    armchair_warrior
    X-brooklynite wrote: [quote=armchair_warrior]i would say bensonhurst has affordable housing. 800-1200 for 1-2 br single person can handle it.
    But can african americans who can afford to live there do so without being racially slurred, beaten and killed?

    majority of the inbreed haters moved to staten island and long island and nj.


    they didn't like anyone who wasn't Italian. i was chased and beaten etc.. so were my friends. not just african americans. that has change along time ago.
  • lilbangladesh
    lilbangladesh
    I probably could afford the studio, but that seems to be an awfully sketchy block. Um... pass.

    That said, if you have been paying your mortgage steadily for a long period of time before getting sick and unable to meet payments, most lenders WILL work with you. It costs WAY too much to foreclose on homes and it's more cost effective to forgive payments for a few months than to foreclose on a home. My dad was able to get his payments suspended for a few months when he was out of work and because of that, the bank which owns his loan now has a loyal customer for life.

    But the key is COMMUNICATION WITH THE LENDER, which in most foreclosure stories didn't happen. The FIRST thing you need to do if you fall ill and can't make payments is TALK TO YOUR LENDER. If you just try to suck it up, you'll end up in foreclosure before you know it.
  • capt. planet
    capt. planet
    Gone are the days when Brooklyn was a dump. Then you could get affordable houses because no one wanted to live here.

    Now Brooklyn is hot and vacant lots cost $300,000, more than houses sold for 5 years ago in Crown Heights. When the lot costs the developer $300k, and construction costs $300/sf, then a developer must spend for six apartments of 800 sf each at least $1.7 million. To get a 15% profit, which is very little considering the risks associated with new construction, he'd have to sell out for $1.955 million, about $325,000 per apartment.

    The only way to beat this math, that I know of, is to have a government program to subsidize affordable apartments.

    Unfortunately, at least since Ronald Reagan was president, or was it Richard Nixon, "government program" is another of spelling "waste and corruption" and conjures up all the evil images of bureaucrats on an endless lunch break living off the fat of the middle class.

    Any ideas how we get out of this box?
  • lilbangladesh
    lilbangladesh
    Ummm... re-define "government program"?

    I dunno about you, but I've always thought that the attack on "government waste" (ha! anyone remember $900 toilet seats?) was really an attack on the middle class. Most government programs have in the past have been aimed at the maintenance and stabilization of the middle class. Very few programs (though they are the most visible) are aimed at the poor. Those programs have always been such a tiny portion of the federal budget that even with corruption and waste don't even begin to approximate the wastage in the defense budget. All of the programs for the poor, even in their heyday, was about 2% of the budget.

    Programs for the middle class have always been more hefty and more invisible, like tax deductions for mortgage payments.

    Democracy requires a large and stable middle class to function and it never struck me that neo-conservatives have been particular fans of democracy, thus their attacks on the poor were really attacks on the middle class. Keep 'em poor and don't let them attain the middle class, God forbid, and while we're at it, let's make the middle class struggle to stay there so no one has time to pay attention to what's happening to our democracy.

    And of course, who did we let define what a government program means? We let neo-conservatives define all government intervention and funding as bad and now we're paying the price for it.

    I dunno about you, but I *like* public libraries, which are government-funded. Yet since they are government-funded, they must be BAD. Let's drown them in the bathtub!

    We need to re-define what the public and private spheres should be. Many social problems have been exacerbated by privatization rather than solved. But then the neo-conservatives never gave a rat's ass about social problems, or society in general. They just want what's theirs.
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