As public funding for affordable housing dwindles, perhaps it’s worth looking for major financial support elsewhere, as in … East Asia!

Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but has it really come to this, trolling for investors in China willing to underwrite an underfunded public need in the United States?

We’ll leave it to others to judge how desperate Miami is for affordable housing. A headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal read:

“Miami Taps EB-5 Visa Program to Help Fund Affordable Housing.”

Hmm, we immediately thought, why not in Vermont? (If you need to brush up on Vermont’s own EB-5 program, which aims to draw economic-development backing from deep-pocketed foreign investors in exchange for green cards, click here, or check out Seven Days’ intriguing update on Bill Stenger’s  various projects in the Kingdom.)

The Journal story noted that Miami has lost affordable housing to upscale development since 2000 and paraphrased a local official as saying that

“it has been difficult for developers of moderate-income housing to compete with luxury developers for land and for financing. At the same time, federal funding for affordable housing has been reduced. In addition to conventional sources of funding a project, using EB-5 funds, which carry considerably lower interest rates than conventional bank loans, might help level the playing field.”

Well! It so happens that Vermont’s EB-5 regional center is headquartered in the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development, which happens also to be home to the Department of Community and Economic Development. DHCD’s advocacy of “strong communities” extends to affordable housing. Why don’t these two bureaucratic wings consider combining forces, or at least, put in a call to Miami?

As things stand, affordable housing isn’t in Vermont’s EB-5 mix. You can see all the projects if you click here.  Mount Snow is on board for construction of a pond and a ski lodge, and is inviting interest in “future projects” that could include hundreds of luxury units … with no mention of affordability, at least in the promotional blurb on the website.

Well, there’s plenty of room for affordable housing at Vermont’s ski areas, as we’ve pointed out in a previous post.  Surely there must be plenty of socially responsible investors in China hankering for U.S. residency who are willing to put up the capital, right?

Maybe the photo with the Journal article, of the Miami EB-5 program’s first project, will whet a few appetites:

Oops, that first project isn’t affordable.