I am also confused by this statement. The most generous interpretation I have is that this number is quite high, and therefore, the bar to being more 'affordable' than this is 'low' in that selling, say, a $500,000 ADU appears quite affordable in comparison. I don't know though, it obviously all seems quite absurd. The other interpretation might be that SFH are far more than this, but one would think you would include the average price of SFH when making such a point.

You mean you don’t want to pay 4K a month to live in a shed in someone’s backyard? Do you hate common sense, market-based solutions or something?

With 20% down ($122k), 7% interest with 30 year fixed rate on $488,000, monthly payments are $3247. Not $4000 but still a lot for a shed.

I had to do a double-take at that. That's the (inflated) going price for a 2,000+ sq. ft. home in the Southeast right now. With land.

One might surmise that the demand for housing in the part of the Southeast you're thinking of is much lower than in urban California.

Yes, the bar for affordability is low, meaning high prices are still considered affordable in that market. The bar measures what is considered affordable, not the price.

Yes, think of it like this. Prices are super high. A house costs one dump truck full of money. The goal of a program like this is to create something that costs, say, half a dump truck of money instead of a whole dump truck. It's affordable, in a relative sense. Or less unaffordable if you prefer.

In normal circumstances (with prices that aren't super high), you wouldn't be able to call $610,000 affordable. But here, you can. So the bar is low. The label has loose criteria.

As in "this 748 square foot property was deemed 'affordable' when priced at $610k" - the implication being that it's a low bar to call something affordable, not that it's a low bar to _actually be_ affordable.

edit: sorry, this was already said by multiple other people - apparently had an outdated thread in the browser, those comments weren't there when I hit reply!