A new affordable housing development in San Francisco offers 95 one-, two-, or three-bedroom apartments, and attracted 6,580 applicants hoping to live there.
The Natalie Gubb Commons' nonprofit developer, Mercy Housing, got the land for free as part of the city's affordable housing requirement in the neighborhood's redevelopment, and is reserved for households with incomes up to 50 percent of the local median, The New York Times reports. Funding also came through California's cap-and-trade emissions program revenue and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. An online lottery system was used to select the development's new residents.
As the development neared completion, Congress was closing in on a tax overhaul whose central goal, a much lower corporate tax rate, would make it harder to finance projects like this one, in a time of acute housing need. By one estimate, the bill would erase 235,000 affordable rental homes nationwide over the coming decade ... Too, the value of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits began to fall. A lower corporate tax rate meant companies would have less reason to put equity into affordable housing in exchange for credits to offset their tax liability.
