With Monday evening’s long-awaited City Council discussion of affordable housing nearly at hand, now what?

Where is the revenue?

The will to accommodate, to meet obligations, may exist, but optimism almost is invisible entering the 7 o’clock meeting in the Rotunda Room of the Vets Auditorium.

“Construction is expensive, and developers like Habitat for Humanity, willing to build affordable housing are few and far between,” Councilman Andy Weissman says.

Is the meeting, which is expected to attract a throng of advocates, a futile exercise, given the lack of funding available?

“Not futile,” said Mr. Weissman. “If one is expecting a light bulb to go on and a strategy will come out of the meeting that is going to lead to the immediate creation of affordable housing, you are going to be disappointed,

“That is not going to happen.”

Is a feel-good evening in prospect?

“It may turn out to be a feel-bad evening,” Mr. Weissman said, “unless we are able to develop strategies, the types of incentives that would create an atmosphere for developers to build affordable housing.”

Addressing motivation, the Councilman said “there has to be an economic reason to develop affordable housing. You cannot expect that developers are going to build projects and rent them out at below market rate, unless there is some economic benefit to them.

“The way to incentivize developers to do that is to increase density. That way they can build more units and make it up in volume.”

(To be continued)