Tons of New Apartments Are Being Built That Almost No One Can Afford

I would call this article deliberately misleading.

It tries to make the point that new luxury apartment construction is bad for rent prices:

>And ideally, developers say, building more units for wealthy tenants means they’ll move out of their smaller apartments, leaving them available to lower-income renters. An analysis out of the Joint Center For Housing Studies of Harvard University found this isn’t happening.

The article then links to an analysis that contradicts their point by saying: >> expanding supplies of new luxury apartments pushed up vacancy rates, helping to slow rent growth.[2]

The article tries to convince the user that these units are sitting empty: > one in four new luxury units built after 2013 remain unsold, according to the New York Times.

That's an odd way to say three out of four of the new luxury units have been sold.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bnme/tons-of-new-apartm... [2] http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Harvard_JCHS...

> "The news that 80% of new units this year will be luxury further illustrates that the private market fails to provide housing for the lowest-income renters," said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. "The argument that the production of luxury rental homes will ultimately benefit these renters through filtering is misguided, given what they can afford to pay. Significant federal investment is needed to both increase the supply of affordable homes for low-income renters and preserve the existing supply.”

This has been happening for years in my city. Tons of luxury apartments and homes being built, almost always with taxpayer help, that nobody can afford.

The promises from developers that housing will "trickle down" so that normal people can afford it has proved to be complete nonsense.