veryfirst t1_j89dc11 wrote on February 12, 2023 at 5:08 PM

Columbia was founded as a whole community, a giant experiment where the investment was toward all types of homes, all types of people, all living in a brand new more idyllic place. The return on investment model at that time was dramatically more community focused than today.

Modern housing developments look at the construction of building x, the income it will bring in to the developer and the breakeven numbers. With the new business model for additional housing units there is no motivation to build the way the first townhouses were built, the first subsidized units were built, single family homes were built etc. Diversity of income and background become almost irrelevant in the design and economic choices of the housing being constructed. The only way that these types of communities can grow with the original thinking in mind is with mandates from the county, especially with new larger developments. Income subsidized units MUST be required with every single new apartment building or condo development. No waiver should be allowed for building any apartment buildings like they have been in places like 'The Marlow' or the apartments by the mall.

telmar25 t1_j8l9upn wrote on February 15, 2023 at 3:16 AM

I agree with your intentions but not the mechanism. New apartments are generally going to be expensive because they’re new and automatically more desirable than similar-sized existing housing stock. Income subsidized units in buildings like the Marlow and Juniper are actually pretty laughable solutions to affordable housing. They’re always outrageously expensive for people who actually meet the income limits, and there is always some tiny number of affordable units allocated to check a box. A much better solution for affordable housing is simply to let builders build more and denser housing. And Marlow and Juniper are examples of builders doing exactly that. Even if they stay top end for a while, their construction will increase supply and lower the prices of the rest of the apartment housing stock. Meanwhile many neighborhoods in Columbia fight hard against this kind of dense construction even though it was Rouse’s vision to mix more dense and less dense housing together. Generally it’s all these building restrictions that have pushed up prices to ridiculous levels—for the most extreme examples, see Silicon Valley.