It is hard to understand how anyone with an income of $160,000 a year could be elgible for low income housing. The reason becomes more clear when you reallize that Santa Barbara, California is a rich mans city, and rich cities need police, firemen, and nurses just like any other normal city.
Being a rich city I imagine that they also pay them well above the average rate for most other cities across the country. So these people aren't poor, they are just middle class income people priced out of the home market.
The conundrum is that the city has used it's last vacant lot and the median home price is $1.2 million. (Wouldn't you like to have bought some of that land a few decades ago). These condominiums are proposed to sell for $495,000 to $595,000.
Not, however, just any housing development. The City Council is considering whether to use the property to build affordable housing, a condominium complex called Los Portales for families earning up to $160,000 a year.
Now, "it's hard to get sympathy for people making $160,000 a year if you're down in Texas or something," said Bill Watkins, head of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project. Any household with that kind of money is in the nosebleed section of American earners, and "most of the country would think, 'You're going to subsidize that person's house? You're kidding me.' "
But in this city — where the median home price is around $1.2 million — that person needs help. And the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara is about to become the rare public housing agency to assist the well-heeled along with the poor, to build shelter for those whose business cards come in designer leather cases and include words like "doctor," "lawyer," "director."
Still I have a hard time working up much sympathy. There are other remedies for civil servants like police and firemen. Like allowing them to live outside the city and commute. Other middle class workers can already do the same.
Santa Barbara may be one of the richer cities, but much of California has a similar problem, which is probably why only fringe areas are growing. Cities like Oakland, Los Angles and Berkley are losing population. In fact if I'm not mistaken the state as a whole is losing population.
H/T
The World According to Nick
