NYT: Cut-Rate Homes For Middle Class Are Catching On

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Affordable housing, once shorthand for low rents for the poor, is being stretched like never before to include homeownership for people who are more likely to have Starbucks cash cards than food stamps in their wallets. These middle-income earners, priced out of homes from Burlington, Vt., to Santa Fe, N.M., are being offered financial breaks to live in hot real-estate markets and near their jobs.
....
Sometimes called low-cost, work force or inclusionary housing, the cut-price units are most popular in places "suffering from success," as one study described the cities where real estate costs outpaced incomes and where government officials, businesses and housing advocates were struggling to increase homeownership for all but the rich.

Unlike traditional government programs intended for the most disadvantaged, the emphasis is on people with full-time jobs who earn too much to qualify for federal assistance but too little to obtain a conventional mortgage, at least not in the cities or neighborhoods where they want to live.

Typically, those household incomes are 80 percent to 120 percent of the median income, which, in expensive metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Boston and New York, can extend into six figures for a family of four.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/national/29afford.html?hp&ex=1128052800&en=c7bf961b1313bd57&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Corgigal]

1. Get Out

Might be possible for me and the hubby to move into NYC when the kiddies get out of school after all. Wish I knew where to find these homes.

[LizMoonstar]

2. i think they have some of these in my city -

classy downtown lofts that run cheap if you qualify but luxury prices if you don't. we may have to look into that.