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Patience is rewarded in Winfield, New Jersey, a town about an hour from New York.
To rent most quiet hamlet homes, potential tenants must sit on a 25-year waiting list. This kind of exclusivity has preserved its charm.
By keeping its small population, Winfield has maintained some of the lowest rents in the state: about $ 690 per month for a two-and-a-half-room property and $ 725 a month rent for five-and-a-half years. room at home.
Read more: 9 cities and villages where you can get accommodation for free – or buy one at a reduced price
Most of the township's metal-clad suburbs are painted in pale blue or pale yellow. Residents have the option to build a porch if they wish and only two pets are allowed per unit. There is also a daycare center, a community center, a seniors' center, a combined primary and secondary school and a shopping center with only two stores.
The lifestyle is quaint, but it's also a bit of a luxury when you consider that rents at Winfield are cheaper than those at a regular studio in New Jersey.
There are also many ways to be on the waiting list. Family members of any of the 1,470 residents of Winfield are given special priority, provided their loved ones are in good standing with the local Housing Corporation Winfield Mutual Housing Corporation. The company owns all of Winfield's 250 buildings, which include approximately 700 homes.
Another way around the system is to request a "bachelor" – the name of the township for a studio of about 415 square feet. Unlike other properties, singles have a waiting list of about 3 to 4 years.
Although the Winfield system is relatively unique, it is not uncommon for people to wait in long lines for affordable housing. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that nearly half of the US housing vouchers had a waiting time of more than three years.
Many small towns in Mbadachusetts have waiting times that can last a decade. In 2017, the waiting time for low – income renters in Los Angeles was about 11 years and the city no longer accepts new candidates.
In Stockholm, securing a rent-controlled property can take up to two decades.
The big difference in Winfield is that the entire township is both affordable and on the waiting list. Today, it operates as a miniature business, with each resident holding a stake of $ 7,500 in the Winfield Mutual Housing Corporation. The company pays the water bill for residents, but individuals must subscribe to their own gas, electricity and liability insurance.
The problems with this model almost prevented the establishment of the township in 1941. When Winfield was first proposed as a community of defense workers on the Kearny shipyards, the governor of the Charles Edison, feared that it would become a "federal island" that would be absolved from traditional laws.
"Today, Uncle Sam owns a city," wrote the Elizabeth Daily Journal shortly after the founding of Winfield. "Uncle Sam can neither self-tax nor vote for himself.The occupants of the houses can not be taxed as an ordinary owner and he has promised them low monthly fees, but with all the benefits of the life in the city. "
Today, these guaranteed affordable housing comes with some compromises: the isolation of neighboring communities.
"We do not do business in Winfield," Alex Smolenski, real estate broker in another suburb of New Jersey, told NJ Advance Media. Smolenski said the terrain in Winfield was worth "many, many, millions of dollars", but that the properties are "essentially double-width trailers".
Caravans or not, potential residents are eager to live there (Winfield attracts about 50 apps per month), and current residents have always been attentive to their luck.
"We are so small that even state and county cartographers sometimes forget to put us on their cards," we read in the official history of the commune. "Of course, we sometimes feel a bit angry, but then we look at our" Green Acres "and realize our blessing."
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