Value and Viability

Affordable housing is value in motion; money making money as interest-bearing capital or as surplus value extracted from land rent. This chapter follows the flow of value from that monopolised asset of scarcity, the earth itself. Land values are propelling housing costs, and that same surge in value goes to subsidise the price of affordability. The allocation of land as a use value is the necessary means to decommodify housing, but the provision of affordable homes depends on the treatment of land as fictitious capital. Land values must be forced upwards to subsidise a supply of affordable homes, and affordability worsens as land prices rise. Affordable housing is marooned in the centre of circulating flows of value, appearing alternately as the remedy of land speculation, and as its beneficiary. In this chapter, I review the effectiveness of inclusive zoning policies and planning obligations that divert value from the profits of real-estate development to subsidise the exchange price of housing. Valuation and viability stake out the decisive battlefield on which rival claims to value are fought, but affordability is an illusory goal in a housing market dependent on continuously soaring land rents.