A member, who hasn’t been as active in workforce housing policy, requested information recently on how different communities calculate the value of a dollar spent on housing. Turns out communities as this very question in different ways and come up with different metrics. Below are a variety of documents highlighting how different communities ask and answer this question of the “value” or Return on Investment for Affordable Housing.
- The Trust for Community Housing measures it in the replacement cost for an employee by a local employer, and through various metrics for how “Affordable Housing Helps the Community” including achieving more spending locally, and reduced vehicle miles.
- The Town of Vail figures a $3,239 annual return per unit divided by the average cost of a Deed Restriction acquired through the Vail Indeed Program and then uses a three bottom line “multiplier” to estimate an annual return of $312,467 per unit.
- The Town of Silverthorne looks at it in terms of the cost of serving additional units for utilities and other services, and estimates “new household spending,” based on a number of data points.
- In their State of Housing Report, the Town of Breckenridge notes that “workforce housing contributes approximately $15M to the town economy.”
We will add more PDFs as Members send them in. Thanks to Margaret at CAST for providing info from Telluride.