Legislators introduced a bill (LB1217) that tweaks how county assessors determine values certain low-income housing projects, avoiding problems that resulted in skyrocketing values for some Lancaster County properties last year.
It’s hard to pay attention to local issues in the Washington region for long without bumping into the term “affordable housing.”
You may have heard it discussed in relation to the region’s housing shortage, or in soaring housing costs that limit options for all but the wealthiest families. You may have heard affordable housing used as a pseudonym for public housing, or publicly subsidized housing, or housing set aside for those with low incomes.
But most of the time, when you hear about affordable housing, there isn’t a definition attached, and different people mean different things. So what is affordable housing and who is it for?