What Is Low Income Housing?

That depends on where you are. In Palo Alto, ‘low income’ means that you make under $250,000 a year, in which case you are entitled to a low income housing subsidy. That is in Palo Alto’s recently adopted City Housing Element. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. In Palo Alto, a typical 3 bedroom, 2 bath house sells for round $3 million. If you make $250,000 a year, you would have to spend over 70% of your take-home pay to buy a $3 million house, making it ‘unaffordable’. What does it mean to be poor? Well, one way of thinking about poverty is this – someone is poor if he doesn’t make enough money to own his own home. What do you think? Should someone who makes $250,000 a year be entitled to a low income housing subsidy?