The White House kicked off a multiagency push on Friday to help finance real-estate developers convert more office buildings in big cities emptied by the pandemic into affordable housing, taking aim at the nation’s housing crisis.
The initiative looks to harness an existing $35 billion in low-cost loans already available through the Transportation Department to fund housing developments near transit hubs, folding it into the Biden administration’s clean energy push.
It also opens up additional funding sources and tax incentives, offering a new guidebook to 20 different federal programs that can be tapped by developers and offers technical assistance in what can end up being tricky and expensive conversions.
A third peg of the program will see the federal government draw up a public list of buildings it owns that could be made available for sale to help bolster development.
“These downtowns and central business districts that we are taking about today often already designed and orientated around public transit,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a press briefing. “Our intention is to make the most of this opportunity to add more housing near transit in ways that not only reduces the cost of housing, but also often reduces the cost of transportation.”
Yet another program that supposedly helps the poor by giving money to the rich.
third peg of the program will see the federal government draw up a public list of buildings it owns that could be made available for sale to help bolster development.
Jesus Christ. If the government wants to build housing, then it should build fucking housing. Selling publicly owned buildings to private developers to turn into rentals for poor people is trickle down neoliberal bullshit.
There it is folks yet another bailout for corpo scum! Can’t have the corpos deal with the fallout of changing times, that’s for Worthless™ “people” like us! They’re even selling government owned property to help landleeches make more! Oh happy day!
Cuz people and corporations that own land in metropolitan areas desperately need government handouts. Let them take a loss or a mortgage, like anyone else.
Oh right. Doesn’t this usually mean they’ll make like 3 units “affordable” for a few years, then renovate those into a single unit they can charge market for as soon as possible? Basically the minimum they can get away with to close the grift.
About time this started happening.
They better not be converted to rentals if the government is paying for it.
I assure you, no normal person can afford to buy an apartment in a Midtown Manhattan high-rise, even if everything was done solely at cost. Rental units aren’t a bad thing.
If one can afford to rent it + pay enough extra to make the rental have a profit then they can afford to own it. The government shouldn’t be subsidizing profits for already large landlords, so there needs to be strings attached relative to how much money the government gives for the renovation.
Additionally, that’s fine if only e.g. a lawyer can afford to buy it. If a bunch of upper middle class people move out of other neighborhoods to move here then it frees up cheaper units elsewhere.
