The Devaluation of Need

Affordability has put a price on housing need, and the needs assessments of residual welfare systems are mediated by ability to pay. This chapter explores the way affordable housing need is calculated, and the targets for supply or lack of them. It evidences the unequivocal refusal to identify the resources required, and the deliberate and systemic undercounting that is done to maintain the illusion that the market can deliver for housing need. Affordable housing is rendered affordable by the addition of value to discount the price of exchange. This value comes from three sources: profit on production, interest on credit, and uplift on land rent. This price subsidy is not a gift. Surplus value must be paid back in rents, fees, and labour. In this chapter, I expose the unaffordable prices extracted by the myth of affordability illustrated in the intermediate housing market, where the so-called affordable price exceeds market costs. This chapter exposes the part played by affordable housing in the conviction politics of social mixing and the landscape of segregation, exclusion, and banishment that has followed. Affordable housing provides a stigmatised safety net that prices out those most in need.