[jccalhoun]

Same here. I am in a small midwestern USA city of less than 100k people. Someone got a grant to build some housing. Instead of building affordable housing they tried to build a huge "luxury" apartment complex with rent way above average for the city.

[PaulHoule]

Ithaca built a lot of housing in the last few years but is still said to be the most expensive small city in the US. Some of these buildings have a high fraction of "affordable" units, but one "luxury development for seniors" is about as late as a nuclear reactor and hasn't found any tenants because... seniors who have money go to Florida and don't stay in upstate NY.

[anthonypasq]

where i live (Boston) it is impossible to build anything new that is not qualified as "luxury" because its competing with a 150 year old tenement with 20year old appliances.

i dont even know what it would mean to build a new non-luxury apartment. No one has ever explained this to me. New housing is always lampooned as being shit quality yet luxury at the same time just because it has.... cabinets that arent falling off the walls and a floor that isnt slanted so badly that i roll away from my desk?

When the existing current housing stock is so old and bad you just need to build to bring up the average quality of an apartment. Rich people will go to the new stuff and it brings up the floor of housing quality.