Yeah, "affordable". I'm still coming to an understanding of what this means, but basically, I believe "affordable" in terms of housing, is based on median family income for a given area. In other words, average family income. Obviously, if an area has a substantial percentage of very high income earners, that raises the average to a height absurdly greater than that of minimum wage earners. Can't remember the last figure for median family income that I read, but it seemed ridiculous....doesn't sound right when I think about it, but $50-$60 thousand. Could be less. I'll try do a search later.
So anyway, you can figure out what that means. Nobody with a $20,000/yr job with a family to support is going to be able to afford much "affordable" housing. But the developers keep putting up their high priced crap based on the affordable housing figure anyway, further stratifying the society and making the best parts of the city ever more exclusively available to relatively wealthy people.
And just to give urbanpdx his due, his statement "Actually, most households do not have kids.", is probably roughly true. I seem to recall reading a blueoregon person saying some time back that 20% of Portland households have school age kids. Haven't confirmed this though.
Last edited by Drmyeyes; Jan 24, 2007 at 7:12 PM.
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