[thechat] canada's new democratic party

[Martin Burns]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Erik Mattheis wrote:

> 27, 2003, at 11:57 AM, Martin Burns wrote:
> > True, a better way around would be that planning permission is only
> > granted to private developers if they allocate a certain %age of their
> > build to homes affordable on basic salaries (or a mix of salaries).
>
> Hmm ... certainly you're not suggesting that a developer would be
> interested in building "affordable housing" without public subsidies?

Some developers would be. But plainly not enough are when you have a
situation (as in London) where the people required to run public services
[insert discussion about public service pay] can't afford to live anywhere
near the services they're providing.

> Perhaps a few philanthropists would be willing to loose money on
> purpose ...

So what are these philanthropists waiting for?

I have to say that the first mortgage we had was from a housing
association. We couldn't have afforded a mortgage for the whole value of
the property, so we bought 1/4 share and rented the rest. Had we stayed
longer, we would have had the option to buy further shares.

That was a good mixed development too. Some people owned part or all of
their flat. Some people were entirely social housing. There was a
community resource centre with programmes for older and disabled people
(and most of the ground level flats were disabled adapted, while nearly
all of them were reasonably accessible). It was a sweet little community.

Cheers
Martin

--
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie