Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Affordable Housing Funding

City of Alexandria

“The city council tag team of Paul Smedberg and Justin Wilson recently weighed in yet again with their grave concerns about the runaway train that is advocacy for affordable and workforce housing in Alexandria — how it’s endangering vital programs and services, and prudent fiscal management, as well as the “divisiveness” it’s causing.

Being one of those unreasonable malcontents, I checked the city’s fiscal 2014 operating budget to see what I was missing. The three largest categories with their respective percentage shares of the total budget are as follows:

• Transportation and environmental services: 43.9 percent
• Education: 32.3 percent
• Government (legislative, executive, courts, general, etc.): 12.4 percent

 And the housing department’s share? That would be 0.4 percent. What a budget hog indeed.”

~Writes Jim Mercury in a letter to the Alexandria Times

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