In a previous post, I wrote about how it's worth separating the way we fund affordable housing into two buckets: Capital subsidy, which helps the government or a mission-oriented third party buy or build a building; and rental subsidy, which makes the homes in a building extra affordable.
Moderate versus deep affordability While we (advocates, elected officials, public agency staff, and media) often speak in a binary shorthand in which all housing is either "market rate" or "affordable," anyone who has actually paid rent knows that what is "affordable" entirely depends on
For at least a year, in certain very particular corners of LinkedIn, Substack, X, and Bluesky (along with the Crain's and Tribune editorial pages), affordable housing construction costs have been a hot topic in Chicago. It's easy enough to see why: The headline numbers are pretty