Are there perverse incentives built into the Bellingham Home Fund?

How will the Bellingham Home Fund keep housing affordable? Housing costs go up or down depending on availability and the amount of money there is to spend on housing. If there is more money available, people will want to rent or buy something a little better. Many individuals making the same decision will bid up the price of available housing.

Will the Bellingham Home Fund keep under-employed people here rather than moving to areas with better job opportunities? For example will someone in education who works part-time stay here because she will now have her rent subsidized instead of moving to where jobs are more plentiful?

If we build more low-cost housing, from which the city receives less property tax revenue, won't that mean that everyone else will have to pay more in property taxes to fund basic city services? Assuming that services are kept constant, if some of the properties pay less that means the other properties are going to have to pay more.

Won't folks who would benefit from Bellingham's subsidized housing want to move here? Would the Bellingham Home Fund solve some city's affordable housing problem, just not Bellingham's?

How the Bellingham Home Fund will actually work is missing from the proposition. Just asking us to trust some citizen's committee or city department is not good enough.

James Lott

Bellingham