Affordable Housing: Thoughtful, Important Words About It. Only . . . What Is it?

The face of a big high rise building with plants on many balconies
This scene was created by affordablehousingaction.org in accordance with the use restrictions of a Creative ML OpenRAIL-M license
Mixed income building projects are popular these days. Which housing units are affordable? Can you tell? Do you even know what it means?

Pardon us while we parse a truly useful way of thinking about ‘affordable housing’ proposed by the mayor of Edmonton, Alberta.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said, in relation to a political ‘love us and hug us’ event for the media, “We never stop building roads . . .” Right, let’s stop the Mayor there for a moment. (We did say this was a parsing of his words.)

Who is ‘We?’ We can’t quite tell from a supplied picture, since as well as representatives from the provincial and federal government, there is a building industry executive.

Fortunately, by jumping further down, ‘we’ is defined as “all levels of government.” In this context, ‘we’ makes perfect sense. Still, good to know who the mayor is talking about from the start  — those who carry  burden of responsibility for building our roads. Carry on, Mayor. And he does: ” . . . we never stop building the LRT [transit], we never stop building fire halls and recreation centres . . .”

Stopping you again mayor. And so far, your words make perfect sense. To paraphrase, borrowing a term from the end of your pronouncement as reported by the Edmonton Journal, these facilities are considered ‘core infrastructure,’ and governments should never stop building ‘core infrastructure’. Indeed, building ‘core infrastructure’ has pretty much forever been a key purpose of governments, in particular city governments.

Back to you, Mayor Sohi.  ” . . . but we tend to stop building affordable housing . . .”

What! Wait a minute. When did any level of government, Edmonton in particular, even start building ‘affordable housing’? ‘Affordable housing’ is either a largely meaningless term, reflecting the idea that someone, somewhere can ‘afford’ the housing, whatever its price. Or, on the other hand, it is defined as a concept linked to the free market, such as the definition that the Canadian federal government is currently using for ‘affordable housing’ — a hardly surprising definition, given that Canada has a free market economy.

So Mr. Mayor, if in the unlikely case that the city has ever built free market housing, shouldn’t it stop immediately? The city seems to be acting well beyond its responsibility to its most vulnerable citizens.

Now, you might have considered refining your statement. You might have said ‘social housing,’ or ‘public housing,’ or even ‘deeply affordable housing,’ or ‘truly affordable housing.’ All of which have formal or informal definitions that could relate to government responsibility for housing its most vulnerable citizens. Those citizens, rather than be forced into homelessness by the free market, need to be included once again (as they have in the past) into a core responsibility of city governments.

So Mayor Shohi, finally allowing you to get an uninterrupted word in edgewise, here’s your full statement as recorded by the Edmonton Journal:

“We never stop building roads, we never stop building the LRT, we never stop building fire halls and recreation centres, but we tend to stop building affordable housing — not just us, but every order of government,” Sohi said at the community and public services committee on Tuesday. “We have always seen affordable housing as an add-on, not as core infrastructure. I think that’s why I would like to see that mind shift.”

If you meant ‘social housing’ Mayor Sohi, good on you. Your sentiment is an act of courage in a time when social housing tends to be reviled rather than praised.

But did you really mean the vague term ‘affordable housing?’ Pfft. We really don’t need to be channelling more taxpayer dollars to a financialized free market.

But then, maybe that’s the game plan? How much should we read into the building industry executive in your accompanying photo op? Where are the members of the Enoch Cree Nation who are supposed to be the beneficiaries?

And so, hoping as we do that the media has accurately captured Mayor Sohi’s thoughts, read more about how Edmonton is supporting social housing as a core infrastructure funding responsibility, OR how Edmonton is planning to funnel taxpayer dollars into the financialization of a profiteering housing industry — in the Edmonton Journal: Affordable housing should be treated and funded as ‘core infrastructure,’ says Edmonton’s mayor