GLOSSARY
What is social housing? Here are key terms and language for understanding the differences between social housing and our current housing system, which is dominated by for-profit developers, corporate landlords, and Wall Street investors.
Social Housing: Social housing is a public option for housing that is permanently affordable, protected from the private market, and publicly owned or under democratic community control. Social housing can be owned by public entities or non-profits, including community land trusts or cooperatives. It includes public housing for the lowest-income and most marginalized residents, as well as affordable options for low- and moderate-income households. It may be occupied by renters as well as homeowners who have formed limited equity cooperatives or live on community land trusts.
To curb homelessness and displacement, we believe social housing programs in the U.S. must first start by prioritizing those most in need: low-income residents and people of color who have the least housing options. But at scale, in successful examples around the world, social housing provides a public option for the majority of residents, including moderate-income households – in order to limit corporate abuses and for-profit speculation on our homes.
To socialize: To place a resource or service under public and democratic ownership, stewardship, and management for the public interest and to ensure those who need it have access – instead of under the ownership of for-profit corporations. Examples of socialized resources include public education, Social Security, the postal service, and more.
Below Market-Rate: A price that is lower and more affordable for renters, residents, or buyers, compared to “market-rate” prices that sellers set to maximize profit. “Market-rate” prices do not always reflect actual production costs. Speculation or the demand of those with more money and power can drive up market-rate prices.
Decommodify: To provide or distribute a resource, good, or service according to human need rather than whether it is profitable. To create a system where access is based on need, not profit. To ensure shared public access to vital resources, rather than having these be controlled by for-profit actors who limit or steer availability to make a profit. Decommodification recognizes that markets can fail to meet human needs because powerholders and for-profit exchange exclude people who can’t afford a good or service, or who suffer institutionalized discrimination or bias.
Decommodify housing: To make sure housing cannot be bought and sold for profit. To make sure all people have housing, because access to housing is based on need, rather than on ability to pay for it. Decommodifying housing is necessary, because markets can fail to meet human needs: those with power, and the process of for-profit exchange itself, excludes people who can’t afford to pay, or who suffer discrimination and bias.
Financialization of Housing: A global trend over the last 50 years, where government policies have increasingly linked financial and real estate markets, allowing for-profit Wall Street investors to trade and speculate on real estate assets. Housing, land, and financial products derived from real estate assets are being traded on global financial markets by investors worldwide. Housing is increasingly financed by large for-profit investment companies with enormous power, which treat it as an asset for returning profits rather than as shelter for people. Investor demands for profit are fueling evictions, rent increases, and gentrification.
Privatization: When governments sell or transfer public assets and resources from public ownership to for-profit ownership, control, or management by private corporations.
Speculation: To gamble on whether an asset will be worth more at a future time. The process of buying land, housing, or financial products derived from real estate assets — with intentions to treat these as an investment vehicle whose value will increase even without further productive effort.1 These investment strategies — from flipping properties to predatory direct investment to trading obscure financial products based on mortgage or rental securities — often operate on a global scale and work against local housing affordability and stability.
Forms of Social Housing
Public housing: A form of social housing directly owned by the government. In the United States, public housing is a critical source of deeply affordable housing for the lowest-income families. But lawmakers have underfunded and neglected public housing for decades, so it is in disrepair; they have passed racist and punitive policies that criminalize public housing residents. Public housing must be fully repaired, modernized, and greened. Policies that criminalize public housing residents must be rolled back.
Community land trust (CLT): A non-profit, community organization that owns land on behalf of a community and protects it from market pressures, often to provide long-term housing affordability and sustainable development. To ensure community stewardship of land, CLTs may be governed by elected boards consisting of CLT residents, community members, and representatives from the public or non-profit sector. CLTs separate ownership of land from ownership of buildings on the land but impose affordability restrictions on the latter. While a CLT holds land permanently to take it off the market, for instance, it can lease the land at low-cost and on a long-term basis to homeowners, enabling stable and affordable homeownership. The homeowners build wealth on a shared equity or limited equity basis, but are deed-restricted as to how much profit they can resell their homes for, so that the housing stays affordable. CLTs also host limited equity housing cooperatives and affordable rental properties; as well as community gardens, daycare centers, office space for non-profits, and more.
Limited equity housing cooperativeor affordable housing cooperative: Tenants themselves jointly own a property to ensure it is used for people’s needs, not profit. The tenants agree to limit rent increases as well as how much apartments can be resold for, to preserve affordability.
