Price Is the Problem

Affordability puts an economic value on housing need. It implies that the unequal distribution of decent housing can be remedied by the operation of supply and demand in the housing market. This chapter critiques the economics of supply and demand and explores the contingencies of these categories in the differing use values of housing. Its aim is to situate the dynamics of price and value within the circulation of capital. Affordable housing is a commodity that produces value, realises value, and enables the extraction of value, but at the same time – in its relation to need – changes the idea of value entirely. If demand is social need with “money to back it up,” as Marx said, what is need without money? The chapter asks what it means to make affordability the goal of housing policy in a system where value is determined by price.