I agree that the HUD definition is better, but what do we do when there are large numbers of people in an area where there is not available affordable housing? Like if market rent starts at $1000/month for a bachelor suite, and a minimum wage worker earns $2000/month, what do we do (societally)?
Build housing and transit! Aggressively! Angrily! Eminent domain aggressively to build better transit, force the placement of stations where it make sense geographically, and fucking roll over NIMBYs within 4 miles of stations.
>Build housing and transit! Aggressively! Angrily! Eminent domain aggressively to build better transit
I completely disagree. The NIMBYs you complain about are the ones running the local governments. Doing the things you suggest require some higher level of government to basically take the place over and force these things over the objections of the politically-connected locals.
Instead, I think these overpriced places need to be made to die. Let them feel the full effects of their policies: make it so no service workers will work there for less than $200k/year, and just going out to eat costs $1000/person. If a higher-level (state or federal) government does anything, it should be for the lowly workers, to do things like help them relocate to cheaper places and leave these overpriced places full of dried-out poop on the street and boarded-up stores because the NIMBYs didn't want "those people" living anywhere near them.
Except they don’t end up feeling the effects. What happens is they start offering rent control or voucher programs to help lower income families. This gets presented as “equitable”, when all it really does is push wages down for a specific class of people. These same people get “stuck” in affordable housing because they won the housing lottery and can no longer afford to move out.
Has anything thought about just doing... nothing? If a city doesn't want to make itself affordable for minimum wage workers, then why exactly is that a problem? I would encourage other municipalities to try to lure away these workers with some incentives, like a relocation bonus, but if places like SanFran refuse to build affordable housing, I feel like it would be better if they simply couldn't get anyone to work there for less than, say, $200k/year. If that means locals have to pay $50 for a Starbucks drink and $500-1000 for a sit-down restaurant meal for 1, then that seems like a good thing to me. At some point, the whole thing will collapse.
The reason there's no affordable housing (or public transit) is because municipalities don't want it. They're run by NIMBYs who block every attempt at building it, and who run up the costs for what housing there is. These people need to feel the consequences of their actions, instead of having some higher-level government compensate for them.