Denver's 'Radical' Affordable Housing Plan

A new initiative, LIVE Denver, seeks to offer affordable housing options to working people in need by placing them in one of the 16,000 vacant luxury housing units in the metro.

The program is aimed toward workers earning between 40 and 80 percent of average area incomes. According to Fast Company, the city estimates that about 13,000 renters in these categories currently have to pay out more than 50 percent of their income in housing costs. Qualifying residents in Denver will pay up to 35 percent of their salaries for apartments offered under the program roughly equivalent to a standard definition of housing affordability.

The city plans to subsidize about 400 units in all over two years, with about a quarter of those on the books already. It will keep tabs on landlords to make sure they don’t simply raise rents to reflect the extra subsidies available. The interesting question will be if the city simply ends up propping up the high-end of the market, perversely offering incentives to developers to build new unaffordable homes.

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