Four or five years ago, U.S. ‘Big Builder’ scammers were on the mooch (as always) for government handouts. To do so, they were promoting the concept of ‘Missing Middle’ housing.
Such housing was to be designed particularly for middle class pocketbooks to be paired with a scarce, ‘just-right’ commodity that apparently no one was building. That’s because construction costs were rising (the supposed reason for soliciting government handouts).
Options at hand for the poor old middle classes:
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- faux luxury housing (a.k.a. McMansions, which Big Builders prefer for profitability, but which leave middle class buyers house-poor).
- naturally occurring and rapidly evaporating ‘natural’ affordable housing (a jump ball for lower classes, middle classes, land-hungry developers looking for tear down/rebuild opportunities, as well as the casino gamblers who financialize housing/land to buy/sell for profit.)
Of course, in the distant background there still exists public housing. But it is well known to be crap that is available only after years-long waiting lists. Anyway the middle classes do not qualify to climb aboard.
And so arrived the term ‘missing middle,’ a satisfying concept for a still-surviving range of countries in love with neoliberal ‘small government’ as well as ‘home ownership for all.’
So how has this ‘missing middle’ worked as a profitable public relations finagle, hoping to hijack handout dollars? Those are the dollars that might otherwise might have been spent to help mitigate a growing worldwide low/no income housing affordability crisis, visible as homeless tent camps in parks and folks sleeping in doorways and dumpsters.
Not surprisingly, there has not been a huge swelling of activist ranks prepared to do battle for the rights of a middle-class goldilocks family finding their just-right missing middle dream home1.
And so, we’ve seen recently the evolution of a much more successful government handout scam that is doing damage worldwide: half-baked or fully baked, the term under which it is offered is Affordable Housing.
It isn’t. Affordable.
Okay, perhaps momentarily, but not for long.
Its benefits? The usual: if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one: big builders are now building Affordable Housing, bless their hearts. And governments are promoting this lie with profitable handouts. The term Affordable Housing reads well in print, seems to keep the masses toeing the neoliberal line and owes its survival to a fundamentally nonsensical foundation.
The critical problem? These days, the term Affordable Housing is invariably linked to the free-market, either referencing a formula based on buyer income, or based on current free-market housing prices and rents.
As everyone knows, these values go up. . . and up . . . and up. What might just have been affordable last week at 10AM, is today more costly, less affordable. And yet the term ‘affordable housing’ is marketed as bullet-proof. Affordable yesterday? Then supposedly affordable today, and tomorrow.
Not. (With the exception of housing price bubble-pops every few decades or so.)
How damaging is the blatant mis-truth buried in the term ‘Affordable Housing? Let’s see how this article about London, UK, replies. London may well be the world epicentre of such a costly lie, particularly so given its dreamboat status for off-shore housing financializers. Read more in SWLondoner: Demolition of 23,000 London social-rented homes has led to homeless families
