I just read "Why affordable housing at Mueller will fail" and it makes a lot of sense.

Affordable housing is supposed to provide opportunity for lower-income home buyers, that part's fine. But once a home has been sold to lower-income family (basically at a discount, funded by the city government), there is nothing that prevents that family from turning around and selling their home at current market prices. In the above post, he argues that within 5 years, that's pretty much what will happen.

For example, say home #1 normally sells for $150,000, but the affordable housing version (home #2) sells or $120,000. That's great, if you qualify, you can buy home #2 and basically save $30,000. But if you were to turn around and sell home #2 a few years later, you could easily sell it for much more than your purchase price. In fact, if home #1 goes on the market for $160,000 (up $10k from original price), why wouldn't you sell your home #2 for $160,000 as well? You would. And by doing so, you've basically converted the city government's charity from a housing discount into real money.

So what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that it won't take long before "affordable housing" home owners figure this out, sell their home for huge gains, and then... you're left with a housing development that looks a lot like what you would have if you had started out selling everything at current market prices (i.e., without any "affordable housing" homes at all).

Whatever your initial goals were (diversifying the home owners, creating opportunity for lower-income families, etc.), you'll end up with something different.

It would probably just be easier all around if the city held a random drawing among lower-income families and handed out $25,000 sacks of money.