I just got off the phone with Will Carless from Voice of San Diego. He made what appeared to be good rebuttals to Kelly Davis’ rebuttals to his affordable housing piece.
Confused yet? I certainly feel that way. Will says VOSD has sent a reply to SD CityBeat defending its piece. I’ve asked VOSD to send me a version that I can publish.When I get it, I’ll put it up here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlWGZHEO7Q
To give one specific example of how VOSD dealt with a disputed point, Carless told me it’s not accepted practice to include a outdoor playground in square-footage calculations, because it’s not a building. If that’s true, then SD CityBeat got it wrong.
I apologize to Carless for not talking to him before, but as I saw no VOSD rebuttal, I assumed they didn’t have one. You know what happens when you assume!
I’m leaving the previous piece up because removing it would spread conspiracy theories that I was forced to. I was not, and Carless didn’t ask me to, implicitly or explicitly.
So consider this a placeholder until this gets sorted out. And it’s a lesson for me not to delve into complicated issues on Labor Day.
Comments 2
Brad,
True, when using rentable square footage (RSF) as a cost measure, you include indoor common areas. Two problems: RSF is used by market-rate developers to measure competitiveness. It’s not used by affordable-housing developers (instead, they look at things like per-unit subsidies; cost per bedroom, since affordable projects contain the rare three- and four-bedroom units; and cost per unit). The reason I included the playground in the Mercado apartments is because Carless told his readers that he included outdoor space. From his explanation of his methodology that came *after* his piece ran:
“I did, however, include common areas like computer rooms and barbecue areas into that square footage, since that seemed equitable.”
As Will’s editor, Andy Donohue, admitted to us in an email:
“Will shouldn’t have used [barbecue areas] as an example in his follow-up blog post because it confuses things and opens the door for the playground to be used.”
I’m happy to rebut anything and everything Will sends you.
Author
Hi Kelly,
Thank you for the Labor Day reply. Seems some of us never rest from our labors 😉
Yes, your rebuttals to the rebuttals to the rebuttals to the VOSD story will be welcome here. I’ll strive to provide a fair and neutral forum where facts come first.
My head hurts from just thinking of the complexities here. I can only imagine how you and Will feel. I know you both worked very hard on your respective stories.
Best,
Bradley