Measuring What Matters: A Call for a Meaningful Metric of Affordable Rental Housing Production Cost-Efficiency

Jake Wegmann

Housing Policy Debate, 2014, vol. 24, issue 4, 692-716

Abstract: The metric commonly used in debates and research concerning the cost-efficiency of multifamily rental housing production, total development cost per unit, sacrifices too much analytical power in return for its ease of computation. This article proposes a replacement metric, the subsidy per housing affordability equivalent (SHARE) ratio. This measure is applied to a set of 399 nonprofit-sponsored rental housing developments completed in California over the past decade. Evidence suggests that the use of SHARE would evaluate deeply subsidized family projects and mixed-use projects with commercial space more favorably than total development cost per unit would. The reverse is true for projects restricted to seniors and for those financed with Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.

Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:houspd:v:24:y:2014:i:4:p:692-716

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DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2014.944851

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