Affordability Housing

经济适用房

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Affordable  Housing is a generic term used to characterize the degree to which residents can afford to rent or buy housing. The usual metric focuses on whether housing rents and mortgages are with the means of those making a certain percentage of the median income.By conversion,housing is deemed a affordable  if people spend 30 percent or less of their income on housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition,the U.S. is in the midst of an affordable  housing crisis, especially for renters, because so many people spend far more that 30 percent of their income on housing. This is the case  for many countries around the world, and the situation has been worsening over time.

经济适用房是一个通用术语，用于表征居民可以负担得起租房或购房的程度。通常的衡量标准聚焦于房屋租金和抵押贷款是否与中等收入的一定比例有关。换一句话说，如果人们将30％或更少的收入用于住房，那么住房就被认为是负担得起的。根据国家低收入住房联盟的统计，美国正处于经济适用房危机之中，尤其对于租房者，因为很多人在住宅上的消耗远远超过他们收入的30%。世界上许多国家都是这种情况，而随着时间的推移情况在进一步恶化。

Housing can always be made affordable if built cheaply and located in poor neighborhoods . The key issue for affordable housing advocates is how to produce good-quality, affordable housing in good-quality neighborhoods. In Western capitalist democracies, affordable housing in well-serviced neighborhoods is difficult to find. It can be maintained either by reducing housing cost-perhaps by building smaller, or using less costly materials-or through subsidy wherever a reduction in cost does not offset higher land values. 

如果建造成本低廉，而且位于贫困地区，住房总是可以负担得起的。对于经济适用房倡导者来说，关键问题是如何在高质量的社区建造高质量的经济适用房。在西方资本主义民主国家，很难在服务良好的社区找到经济适用房。它可能通过建造更小的建筑来降低住房成本，或者使用成本更低的材料，或者在那些通过降低成本已不能抵消更高土地价格的地方以补贴的方式来维持。

There are a wide number of policy options available for increasing the supply of affordable housing. Where housing markets are strong and public subsidies are not available, communities can enact inclusionary zoning rules, requiring developers to provide a certain percentage of new construction as affordable housing units. This is politically expedient, but some have argued that inclusionary zoning ultimately increases housing costs overall, and may be unnecessary where affordability can be designed in (via smaller-sized units and lots). More politically difficult are public housing subsidies, which can be either tenant-based (Section 8 housing vouchers, for example), project-based (the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit [LIHTC] program), or can consist of public housing, where governments own and operate the housing (such as through the HOPE VI program). A nongovernmental option is the community land trust, a private nonprofit corporation that makes ownership for low-income residents possible by maintaining control of land costs. Out of all of these options, however, the federally-operated LIHTC program has been by far the most significant source of subsidy for the development of affordable multifamily housing.

为增加经济适用房供应，有许多政策可以选择。在住房市场强劲，同时没有公共补贴的情况下，社会可以制定包容性分区规则，要求开发商提供一定比例的新建建筑作为经济适用房。这在政治上是一种权宜之计，但有人认为，包容性分区最终会增加总体住房成本，而且在(通过较小的单元和地块)有能力承担经济适用房设计的地方，这种做法似乎没有必要。公共住房补贴在政治上更为困难，它可以是基于承租人的（例如第8节住房券）、基于项目的（低收入住房税收抵免[LIHTC]计划），也可以由政府拥有和经营的公共住房组成（例如通过希望六计划）。一个非政府的选择是社区土地信托，一个私人的非营利公司，通过控制土地成本使低收入居民的拥有物业成为可能。然而，在所有这些选择中，由联邦政府运营的LIHTC项目是迄今为止为开发多户经济适用住房提供补贴的最重要资金来源。

Outside of public subsidies, government-run housing programs, or non-profit mechanisms, affordable housing advocates look for ways to maintain affordability in the open market through cost controls. For example, housing affordability can be improved by the use of cost-effective building materials, or efficiencies that reduce energy costs, or the lessening of regulatory burden. The reduction  of  size is perhaps the most important variable- small lots and small housing units that not only contribute to walkable neighborhoods and good urbanism, but are more affordable by definition. For example, very small apartments known as "micro-units" are now being marketed to small households as a way of maintaining affordability. Urbanists are experimenting with units that are manufactured, modular, kit-based , or panelized in an effort go maintain affordability. A central question, however, is how much the design of the built environment can help ensure a reversal of the incomes segregation that has long characterized human settlement.

除了公共补贴、政府运营的住房计划或非营利机制之外，经济适用房倡导者们寻求通过成本控制的方法在公开市场上保持经济适用性的方法。例如，住宅的经济适用性可以通过使用更高性价比的材料，提升能耗比以及减少监管成本来提高。尺寸的缩小可能是最重要的变量——缩小地块和缩小住房单元，它们不仅有助于实现步行社区和良好的城市化，而且从定义上讲更为经济适用。例如，被称为“微型单元”的非常小的公寓现在正在向小家庭销售，是一种保持经济适用性的方式。然而，核心问题是，建筑环境的设计在多大程度上有助于逆转长期以来以人类居住为特征的贫富分化。

Another important dimension of affordability in an urban context is whether affordability contributes to the overall diversity of a neighborhood, or whether it is furthering disinvestment  and decline in some locations. The idea of calculated social mixing in cities and towns originated in the nineteenth century when social critics were attempting to improve the living conditions of the poor. As refined since then, the good of integrating housing types and sizes is driven by the idea that social mixing ensures more equitable access to resources, and that social diversity is the basis of a more creative and ultimately more stable urban environment. Affordability will thus be valued for the degree to which it contributes to an overall social mix: affordable housing will be needed where there is little affordability, but in areas with depressed real estate values and widespread affordability, adding more affordable housing stock is not a worthwhile objective.

在城市环境中，经济适用性的另一个重要方面是，经济适用性是否有助于一个社区的整体多样性，还是会在某些地区进一步减少投资和形成衰退。计算城镇社会混合度的概念起源于19世纪，当时社会评论家正试图改善穷人的生活条件。从那时起，经过精炼，住宅类型和规模的整合得益于这样一种理念：社会混合能确保更公平地获得资源，社会多样性是更具创造性和稳定性的城市环境的基础。因此，经济适用性将根据其对整体社会结构的贡献程度来进行评价：在负担不起的地方需要经济适用房，但是在房地产价值低迷且普遍具有负担能力的地区，增加更多经济适用房的库存并不是一个值得追求的目标。

The affordability of housing can be measured by factors other than just the price of rent or the cost of a mortgage. Neighborhood quality can also be factored in, where pedestrian orientation, the provision of public space, and walkable access to services become an essential part of the affordability equation. This approach emphasizes the affordability of location, since people living in well-serviced locations will have lower transport costs. The metric has been used to argue for "location-efficient" financing of mortgages, where residents are permitted to leverage transportation cost saving to access cheaper or larger loans. Of course, better access and lower transportation costs may be offset by higher housing prices. In a highly valued context, the source of increasing housing cost is land cost, not unit cost, and thus increasing the cost efficiency of individual units may not necessarily have a significant effect on affordability.

住房的经济适用性可以通过除租金价格或抵押贷款成本以外的其他因素来衡量。社区质量也可以考虑在内，其中是否步行导向、提供公共空间和拥有可步行通达的服务设施成为经济适用性方程的重要组成部分。这一方法强调了地理位置的适用性，因为居住在拥有良好服务设施位置的人们交通成本更低。该指标被用来争取抵押贷款时“位置效益”的融资，这允许居民利用节省下来的交通成本以获得更便宜或更大的贷款。当然，更好的道路与更低的交通成本可能会被更高的房价抵消。从更高的层面来看，增加住房成本的主要来源是土地成本，而不是住宅的单元成本，因此提高单元的成本效率未必对经济性有显著影响。

The goal of increasing affordability in quality urban contexts is more important than ever, given recent evidence  that demand for walkable neighborhoods is increasing. There is concern that the current turmoil in financial markets will only weaken the nation's supply of affordable housing, especially in well-serviced, walkable neighborhoods. As fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are no longer required to provide a specific level of low-income mortgages, there is great uncertainty about the future of affordable housing and whether it will get pushed aside as concerns focus more narrowly on the health of financial  markets. On the more positive side, the policy case for why affordable housing matters focuses increasingly on why the associated neighborhood characteristics matter. The Obama administration has ushered in a new "place -conscious" federal urban policy that ties housing goals to sustainable communities:neighborhoods with good access to services；lower transport costs；a healthy, walkable and safe environment; and a build form that facilitates social and economic diversity. If a new wave of policymakers can find ways to produce more affordable housing in better-quality (i.e., walkable) neighborhoods, that will be a significant advance.

最近的证据显示人们对步行社区需求在不断增加，在高质量的城市环境中提高经济适用性的目标比以往任何时候都更显重要。人们担心，当前金融市场的动荡只会削弱美国经济适用房的供应，特别是在服务良好、步行优先的社区。由于房利美和房地美不再需要提供特定水平的低收入抵押贷款，经济适用房的未来以及是否会被推到一边存在着很大的不确定性，因为人们会更关注金融市场的健康状况。从更积极的角度看，为什么经济适用住房问题的政策案例越来越关注相关社区特征的重要性。奥巴马政府已经开始实施一项新的“地方意识”联邦城市政策，将住房目标与可持续社区联系起来：提供良好服务的社区；较低的交通成本；健康、可步行和安全的环境；以及促进社会和经济多样性的建筑形式。如果新一轮的政策制定者能够找到在更好质量（例如，可步行化）的社区生产更多经济适用房的方法，那将是一项重大进步。

卡特里娜（Katrina）小屋的开发是为了救护幽闭恐惧症患者经济而又保有尊严的替代方案。