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Building a Better City
Europe’s affordable housing standard
San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2004
By Hunter L. Johnson
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In the United States, nonprofit builders dedicated to providing affordable
housing often compete against each other as well as larger, better capitalized
private builders for limited low-income tax credits and other scarce sources
of low-cost financing that make affordable housing projects possible. Because
of this stiff competition, it’s not uncommon for needed and economically
viable projects to be left on the drawing board.
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Even if money is available, nonprofits frequently must jury-rig financing
from several different public and private sources. Financing packages to
build affordable housing can be extremely time consuming and enormously
complex.
Such is not the case in Europe, where affordable housing is dominated by
nonprofit housing associations; few private builders are involved.
Consequently, a sense of solidarity and cooperation has resulted among
the nonprofit builders. This has led, in turn, to financing affordable
housing projects by nonprofits in Europe that is much simpler, faster and
more efficient than in the United States.
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Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to be part of a group of U.S.
affordable housing officials to see first-hand the strides that the Netherlands
and the United Kingdom have made in providing quality affordable housing. In
both countries, affordable housing is a top public priority, and local and
national governments have a well-articulated affordable housing
strategy.
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Unlike California and many other parts of our nation where the lack of affordable
housing is a continuing crisis, low-cost housing in the U.K. and Netherlands is
available to people who need it, when they need it. Both countries have long
histories of development and ownership of affordable housing through nonprofit
housing associations dating back to the Industrial Revolution.
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