Rights Talk,Needs Talk and Money Talk in Affordable Housing Partnerships

Abstract

Spanish

Chinese

There has been increased global activism supporting the right to housing. But in neoliberal governance regimes in wealthy cities of North America and Australia, belief in that right as an effective advocacy tool is weak. This paper focuses on the responses of 30 key affordable housing actors in four cities – Vancouver, Toronto, Portland and Melbourne, the majority of whom reject using the “right to housing” in their organizational work. Fraser’s framework of “rights talk,” “needs talk,” and “interests talk” provide the basis for considering alternative rationales for affordable housing advocacy.

Keywords

housing governance planning theory Australia Canada USA

Introduction: The Right to Housing and Its Discontents

In recent years, there has been increased global momentum supporting the right to housing. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, differ from the previous Millennium Development Goals in several significant ways. These include: first, a shift from poverty reduction in developing countries to a universal focus on equity standards for both wealthy countries of the Global North and poor countries of the Global South; and second, drilling down from the nation-state to an urban governance focus as a scale for sustainable development (Parnell 2016). Goal 11 of the SDGs is to make cities “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and the primary mechanism of this goal is to, by 2030, “ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing” (United Nations 2015, clause 11.1). In this emphasis, the United Nations draws upon the Declaration of Universal Human Rights adopted at the founding of this international governance organization: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family [sic], including … housing,” and these basic needs should be provided, even in the face of “unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” (United Nations 1948, clause 25).

However, the “quixotic” nature of realizing this right within neoliberal governance approaches and structures of many developing countries has been acknowledged for several decades (Hartman 1998, 223). Aalbers (2015), Marcuse (2012), Jacobs and Paulson (2009) and Mortensen and Seabrooke (2008) all argue that, in most countries, the logic of capital accumulation increasingly trumps the right to housing, with the “exchange” value of housing as a financialized commodity and as a generator of wealth valued above the “use” value of housing as shelter.

Mortensen and Seabrooke (2008, 316), who characterize Australia’s “extreme end” commodification of housing as an outcome of both political expediency and a neoliberal belief in housing as a form of wealth creation and retirement savings, say that ignoring housing as a social right has “foreclosed possible futures” (Mortensen and Seabrooke 2008, 312). Similarly, King (2003, 671) argues for housing as a “freedom right,” on a par with property rights, saying that this approach “remoralises” the debate beyond a scarcity model.

The debate about framing affordable housing matters within a collaborative governance model. Allmendinger and Haughton (2012) argue that the shift from national government reliance on direct provision of services such as housing in the mid-20th century to a more collaborative and consensus-based approach over the past four decades stymies necessary conflicts over fundamental challenges like growing socio-spatial inequality. Millward and Provan (2000, 360) take a more equivocal approach to the “hollowing out” of the command and control function of the nation-state, emphasizing that networks of local governments and nongovernment actors can provide appropriate services, providing that they are appropriately “steered” and resourced by a central government. Similarly, both philanthropic funders and government increasingly use the language of “collective impact” (Kania and Kramer 2011, 36) to describe ways that government, businesses and service organizations can collaboratively and successfully develop and implement social policy, including in the area of affordable housing, with the help of an effective “backbone” organization (Westoby and Walsh 2014, 16).

In this article, I argue that multisectoral affordable housing partnerships in wealthy English-speaking Australian and North American cities are increasingly moving away from a shared rhetoric stressing the right to housing, instead justifying their work using cost–benefit analysis and a focus on needs and capabilities. I use 30 interviews with local and senior government officials, private development industry bodies, nonprofit housing providers and investors in Vancouver, Portland, Toronto and Melbourne to demonstrate discursive distinctions between “housing as a human right,” “housing as a complex human need” and “housing as a basis for economic productivity.” I then turn to the implications of these debates within cities, as urban governance systems try to grapple with increasing housing disparities. What kinds of rhetoric have the most compelling bases to create an appropriate sense of urgency for adequate, secure and well-located affordable housing?

Methods

This research arises from an affordable housing university–government–industry partnership in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, with a population of five million in 2018 (ABS 2018). Since 2013, the Transforming Housing Research Network has received funding from the University of Melbourne, local and state government, private development industry bodies, nonprofit housing providers and philanthropic housing investors, to undertake interdisciplinary action research on how to provide more and better-located affordable housing (Whitzman 2017). Affordable housing has been defined in this project as appropriately sized and secure housing (not, for instance, short-term emergency shelters) intended for very low- and low-income households (up to 80% of area median income), well located in relation to public transportation, services and employment, costing no more than 30% of household income, including utilities. We have recently used the new state-level definition of affordable housing, influenced by our work, to calculate a deficit of 164,000 affordable housing dwellings, with over 90% of the deficit in Greater Melbourne (Palm, Raynor and Whitzman 2018, 13).

As part of the initial phase of this work, the lead researcher interviewed seven or eight matched key housing actors in each of Portland, Vancouver, Toronto and Melbourne during the period February to May 2015. The objective of this research was to determine how intergovernmental and intersectoral affordable housing partnerships influenced policy, programmes and outcomes.

All four cities are similarly midsized (2.5–6 million inhabitants), with similar high-end median household incomes, and they all grapple with increasing affordable housing deficits. Canada, the USA and Australia have analogous national trajectories in relation to affordable housing policy: strong investment in affordable homeownership along with limited investment in public and other subsidized rental housing between the 1950s and the early 1980s, followed by three decades of cutbacks to national involvement in affordable housing policy and finance (Harris 1999; Dalton 2009; Suttor 2011). Portland and Vancouver are known for innovations in metropolitan planning and governance, as well as a consensual partnership-based approach (Ozawa 2004; Harcourt, Cameron and Rossiter 2007), while Melbourne and Toronto’s metropolitan governance bodies were abolished by neoliberal governments in the 1990s (Boudreau, Keil and Young 2009; Gleeson, Dodson and Spiller 2010).

The interview participants were selected based on a desktop review of housing policies and media coverage of affordable housing initiatives, along with names garnered from housing researchers working in these cities. In all cities they included: (1) a senior housing policy officer at local and, if applicable, metropolitan government level; (2) a senior housing policy officer at state/provincial government level; (3) a leading nonprofit housing provider or representative of a nonprofit housing industry association; (4) a leading private developer directly working on affordable housing or representative of a private development industry association; (5) a philanthropic investor; (6) an institutional investor in affordable housing; and (7) an affordable housing advocate or representative of an affordable housing action partnership. The housing actors were asked about their understandings of “affordable housing,” needs and rationales for action; who they worked with in partnerships and outcomes from these partnerships; and their opinions on current policies at all scales of government. These interviews, which focused on the process of affordable housing policy and programme development, were contrasted with analysis of policy and programme outputs. We also compared outcomes: how many units of net new social and affordable housing had been created or preserved in the previous five years.

One interview question—“Do you talk about the right to housing in your affordable housing partnerships—why or why not?”—elicited a surprising response. The majority—28 of 30 interview participants—responded that they do not primarily use a rights-based approach in either their internal discussions or in their public advocacy.

Rights Talk in Affordable Housing Discourse

“First generation” rights talk, dating from European and American Enlightenment discourse of the 18th century, focuses on liberty and citizenship. Their specific priorities included religious liberty, voting rights within a representative democracy, the right to own property, and free speech. “Second generation” rights talk is of socio-economic entitlements ensured by national governments, exemplified by the UN Declaration on Human Rights (Attoh 2011, 671–672; see also King 2003).

Urban theorists, from Lefebvre (1991 [1974]) onwards, have spoken of “the right to the city,” which includes the right to produce and reproduce urban life on new terms. Mitchell (2003) has connected this notion of urban rights to housing, and in doing so has challenged existing property laws in the USA, which often discriminate against low-income households and homeless individuals. Marcuse (2012, 217) builds on Harvey’s conceptualization of the right to the city (2003), which in turn is derived from Lefebvre. Marcuse argues that there is a right to housing enshrined in the 1937 US Housing Act (“adequate housing within people’s means”), but that nothing less than a transformation of the way capital is absorbed, distributed and produced within cities and societies will actualize that right in a way that would meet the needs of marginalized and disenfranchised poor people. The right to housing is conceptualized by these theorists as a fundamental challenge to contemporary capitalism.

Only 4 of the 30 interview participants said that they used “rights talk” in their organizational work on improving the quantity and quality of affordable housing. Of those four, only two said that this was their primary rationale for affordable housing. A Greater Melbourne housing planner in one of the 32 local governments within the metropolitan area provided a straightforward example: “Initiatives in [our local government] are values based. We talk about the right to age in place, regardless of income.” A Toronto social housing provider simply stated: “Within Canada we have the collective resource capacity and wealth to make sure [universal access to affordable housing] can happen, unlike, say, Chad. But it isn’t happening. That is a lack of political will, not resources.”

The responses from these two relatively powerless actors contrast with 28 mostly negative reactions to using the right to housing in organizational and partnership work on affordable housing. Opposition to rights rhetoric can be placed in three categories: dismissal as a meaningless concept; being hostile to the right or its perceived implications; and feeling that it is a less effective framework than discourses based on needs or productivity.

Dismissing and Erasing Rights Talk

Humour characterized some responses, as was the case with the Portland local government planner, who sat in stunned silence for a moment before saying, half-jokingly: “Wow. No one says that.” A Vancouver local government planner’s first response was a snort of laughter, followed up with: “We often have this discussion when the UN comes for a visit.”

Two other responses equivocally reframed and thereby erased rights talk. A Melbourne state government planner conflated “human right” with “policy objective”:

The Government of Victoria would say that affordable housing is a clear objective. The [metropolitan planning strategy] says that. The [Planning] Act says that. Our materials say that. So if that is the right to housing, definitely.

Similarly, a representative of a Vancouver private development industry body, who had already jotted his answers on the interview questions sent beforehand, responded: “I would reframe that question as ‘Do people have the right to stop other people from having housing?’” He then went on to discuss neighbourhood opposition to new housing developments for several minutes.

Hostility to Rights Talk

Several interview participants responded with challenges to the concept of housing rights. A Melbourne representative of a private development industry organization differentiated between first generation “rights” and second generation “entitlements,” arguing that governments “should” provide housing for all who need it, but “cannot” because of budget limitations:

I think the government should provide housing to everyone who can’t provide it or find it for themselves, but we need to think carefully about the wording here. Is it a right or an entitlement? Housing is an entitlement, freedom of speech is a right … Rights and entitlements are not the same thing. Rights are “god given” and do not include material items or services. They are not limited by government budgets and are universal. Entitlements, on the other hand, are provided by “government” [quotation marks from his edit] and include things like welfare. Thus, they are limited by government budgets.

A Melbourne private developer who had been involved in two public housing redevelopments, like his industry association counterpart, separated rights from entitlements, within a zero-sum equation of resource scarcity and government waste:

Everyone has the right to a level of shelter, but we don’t need to meet every expectation. Australians often have the perception that governments owe us this or that. You need to be happy with what you have in life … you also need to be able to afford to live as a household and as a society.

Hostility to rights talk was not limited to private developers, and was linked to notions of “deserving” versus “undeserving” poor. A Toronto-based provincial government policy manager became progressively more heated in his response. He began: “Organizationally, we don’t talk about the right to housing … Personally, yes; but with conditions.” I asked him, “What conditions?,” to which he responded:

There are so many people with legitimate needs. But the system we have isn’t smart enough or tight enough. So we pander to people who get, and don’t spend enough on people who need … We are hell-bent on equality and we don’t manage risk or priorities very well. The cream doesn’t rise to the top [of the public housing waiting list].

Rights Talk as Ineffective and/or “Out of Mandate”

The predominant tenor of the 28 responses rejecting right to housing discourse was that it was ineffective in advancing affordable housing policies or programmes. While five interview participants mentioned that the UN Convention on Human Rights explicitly includes the right to housing, three interview participants argued that national or state/provincial laws did not support this right and that local governments did not have the capacity to enact housing as a right without senior government support.

The Vancouver local government housing planner who started by saying that the UN was critical of the city’s absence of a statement on the right to housing went on to stress that there was an implicit understanding within the organization, but that it was strategically disadvantageous and a risk to use explicit language:

I think our homelessness policy implies that the City of Vancouver believes in the right to shelter. I think the right to housing is a different question potentially. It would be great if the answer was yes, but as the level of government that is carrying more than its share of responsibility, we might open ourselves to lawsuits that wouldn’t happen at other levels of government … I’m not sure you negotiate with or persuade people using the right to housing.

The head of a regional Portland antihomelessness initiative with the seemingly rights-based name “A Home for Everyone,” who had been a homelessness service provider for over 20 years, explained:

It is not a right recognized in federal or Oregon courts and it isn’t in the Constitution … So it isn’t a matter for legislative action on civil rights. New York is the only state that has the right to shelter read into the constitution, which is why it has a massive shelter system. So it isn’t understood [there] as the right to a permanent home.

Similarly, a Metro Vancouver housing planner asserted: “It isn’t in the legislation. There is an international UN covenant, but it is vague.” And a Toronto public housing senior manager was terse: “Not under the Canadian constitution or laws … There was a [constitutional] challenge. They were defeated.”

The notion that rights talk distracted from concrete, albeit piecemeal, advancement was picked up by a Vancouver credit union representative undertaking innovative work in affordable housing financing: “Yes, there is a right to housing, but our focus is on tangible products. We’d probably use terminology like ‘social justice’ and ‘financial inclusion.’” Like her, the spokesperson for the Melbourne credit union working most closely on affordable housing provision recognized that “the UN states rights that governments have signed up to. But sometimes you don’t need that to say it is the right thing to do. Certainly our members want greater attention paid [to affordable housing].”

Is There a Problem with Rights Talk?

It is tempting to simply dismiss these private development, investor and government responses as characteristic of a neoliberal mindset that has permeated housing policy. As King (2003, 661) points out, rights are sometimes seen as a “socio-economic claim on scarce resources.” In zero-sum thinking, some people gaining the scarce resource of government subsidized housing might result in others (taxpayers, other people in need of affordable housing) losing out. Moreover, property rights – as initially expressed through 18th- and 19th-century liberal thought, including the right of women to hold property in their own right – implies the right to exclude other people from your property (King 2003, 667). This can be expressed perversely as a perceived right to exclude homeless people from public space (Mitchell 2003), to resist affordable housing developments, or to support excluding people from access to housing because of behavioural issues or simply because there is “not enough housing to go around.”

As Waldren (in Attoh 2011, 672) points out, “in a world characterised by scarcity and conflict,” institutionalization of socio-economic rights does pose trade-offs between housing or education or health rights and property rights that are real, if often exaggerated. Resources, whether they be land or money, that could satisfy the needs of some people, may need to be reallocated from the public commons (public land for public housing), from households or businesses through taxes, or from the private sector developers through development charges, inclusionary zoning and other mechanisms (with the cost possibly passed on to other purchasers or tenants). Rights talk is confronting, and it does imply systemic change. That is both its power, and its limitation.

Needs Talk in Affordable Housing Discourse

As alluded to by the Portland metropolitan planner, translating “the right to housing” as a simplistic “right to shelter” is not enough to ensure an appropriate or secure home. There has been considerable criticism, including by feminist theorists, of the individualist and homogenizing focus of much rights talk (Fraser 1989a; Young 1990; Roy 2001; Fainstein 2010; Nussbaum 2011). What is sometimes called “third generation rights” (Attoh 2011, 671, again citing Waldron 1993) focuses on recognition of different people’s needs, including diverse housing needs.

Fraser (1989b, 292–293) provides a detailed explanation of how the complexity of human housing needs might be obscured by binary rights talk. While

we can uncontroversially say that homeless people, like everyone else in nontropical climates, need shelter in order to live … as soon as we descend to a lesser level of generality, needs claims become far more controversial… What specific forms of provision are implied once we acknowledge their very general, thin need? Do homeless people need forbearance to sleep undisturbed next to a hot air vent on a street corner? A space in a subway tunnel or a bus terminal? A bed in a temporary shelter? A permanent home? Suppose we say the latter. What kind of permanent housing do homeless people need? Rental units in high rises in center city areas remote from good schools, discount shopping, and job opportunities? Single-family homes designed for single-earner, two-parent families? And what else do homeless people need in order to have permanent homes? Rent subsidies? Income supports? Jobs? Job training and education? Day care? Finally, what is needed at the level of housing policy, in order to insure an adequate stock of affordable housing? Tax incentives to encourage private investment in low-income housing? Concentrated or scattered site public housing within a generally commodified housing environment? Rent control? De-commodification of urban housing? We could continue proliferating such questions indefinitely.

One of the challenges Fraser sets out is how to translate this thick or complex set of needs claims into the bureaucratic language of policy development and administration. Similarly, Nussbaum’s conceptualization of a “capabilities” approach asks what is necessary not only to sustain life, but also to promote human dignity to the fullest degree: “having decent, ample housing may be enough [to sustain life]; it is not clear that human dignity requires that everyone have exactly the same type of housing… the whole issue needs further investigation” (Nussbaum 2011, 41). While rights talk is generalizing, needs talk introduces further complexity and suggests a more individualized approach.

There were two related sets of arguments used by the interview participants to justify needs talk over rights talk in affordable housing advocacy. Some argued that it was easier to win hearts and minds using needs rather than rights discourses. Others, echoing Fraser and Nussbaum, posited that needs talk provided a stronger basis for the policy challenge of developing appropriate responses for diverse populations than rights talk.

Needs Talk as Apolitical and Bridging, versus Rights Talk as Divisive

Several interviewees hastened to say that while they were personally supportive of the right to housing, it was not part of the mandate of their organization. The housing advocate working for the Portland philanthropy responded: “[The organization] doesn’t talk like that … Some people do talk about the idea and I’m fully supportive of the idea … [but] I think the framing and the messages are really important, that’s where the political support comes from.” Similarly, a Melbourne social housing developer was careful to separate out her personal views from her organization’s vision, based on needs talk: “[Our organization]’s vision is that all people are affordably housed in neighbourhoods that support life opportunities. Personally I think it is a universal right.”

An argument used by several interviewees was that rights talk was too confrontational within societies which still differentiate between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. A Portland community housing provider said: “There is always a political battle over ‘the deserving’ versus the ‘nondeserving,’ the ‘working poor’ versus the ‘nonworking poor.’” While “the right to housing” is part of the affordable housing advocacy “mantra,” it is “difficult to see [the right to housing] being universally accepted. It is too divisive politically.” Similarly, another Portland community housing provider and advocate added: “There is very effective demonization of ‘leeches’ and ‘I never got mine, why should they get theirs?’”

Asked whether it would help politically to talk about the right to housing, the head of the Portland regional homelessness initiative answered that: “It depends. It could be a rallying point for allies … The rights language lends that weight – to ending homelessness, not just addressing it.” But “in other contexts, it is a debatable proposition. [Some people] might support initiatives, while being uncomfortable … thinking that government needs to build a home for everyone. I don’t want to lose potential allies.” The concern expressed by affordable housing advocates that the right to housing was politically divisive and potentially alienating was borne out by interviews in all four cities.

Needs Talk as Empathy for Diverse People

Related to the notion that needs talk is more effective in winning the hearts and minds of diverse potential allies and the general public is the rationale that rights talk does not put a “face” on people in need of affordable housing. The Portland philanthropic investor, who spoke of the importance of framing messages, added that in the face of “50 years of a very well-coordinated and well-funded campaign to undermine the legitimacy of government and of social spending,” perhaps the priority was to “build empathy … some people aren’t able to work, they are disabled or older or children.” A Vancouver community housing developer began by saying: “No, [the right to housing] isn’t part of [our organization]’s message or rhetoric.” Then she added: “When I talk, it is about women and children’s safety, preventing homelessness, making sure kids can stay in school, keeping them out of foster care, preventing substance abuse.” These were issues, she felt, which had more resonance with potential funders, supporters or objectors than an abstract right. A Vancouver provincial housing planner also described how he preferred talking about concrete needs and first-hand experiences over abstract rights:

Look, my wife and I live in the Downtown East Side where we see the impact of not having enough housing, folks with mental health and addictions, First Nations people suffering from colonialism and the generational impacts of residential schools and women forced to live in unsafe conditions. I wish more politicians would spend time there. Housing isn’t the whole solution, but it is the first step.

The message from these affordable housing actors is that speaking of needs enabled caring specificity about older people, women, children, people with disabilities, indigenous people, in a way that a binary rights discourse might not.

Money Talk in Affordable Housing Discourse

Collaborative partnerships generally bring together representatives of diverse interests who see those interests as interdependent and compatible (Innes and Booher 2010, 6). As Fraser (1989a, 162) points out, there is always an “uneasy relationship” between rights talk, needs talk and interests talk in capitalist welfare states. One of the bridging discourses in affordable housing (or in the provision of any basic need, from education to health care) is how meeting that need might save money in the long term. This cost–benefit analysis discourse of affordable housing enabling greater economic productivity emerged in all four cities, and I have characterized it as “money talk.”

The interview respondents used money talk in two different ways. The first was an extension of the “rights talk as ineffective” and “needs talk as bridging” discourses: that money talk is the most effective way to develop allies and convince politicians and the general public who elect them. A second argument was that you can do good while making money, or at least, that their organization’s affordable housing work is based on pragmatism rather than altruism.

Economic Productivity as a Compelling Narrative

A common response to the question about using rights talk was to assert, as did the Vancouver regional planner, that “the most effective advocacy arguments are around economic productivity and the impact of affordable housing for the workforce.” A Toronto housing provider from a limited equity nonprofit company, a recent arrival from Vancouver, began her response by stating:

Because we aren’t going for direct government grants, we don’t have to make some of those arguments. But if people are paying 45% of their income on housing, what will happen to local economies?… What I saw extensively from Vancouver was people moving away from the city because they could not realize their aspirations there, or felt that there would be some long term insecurity for them. So there is a loss of talent – which is the engine of the city, and the key to a competitive city in the thinking of current urbanists.

Two of the four interview respondents who said their organizations talked about the right to housing also incorporated economic productivity arguments. A Toronto private developer with a 30-year history in social housing development argued that the right to housing is “the starting point for creating healthy communities. You can’t have economic development when you have people without a roof over their heads.” While a Toronto social investor and former public housing manager said his organization did talk about the right to housing, he stressed: “Housing is a pivot point for so many issues, a 20 year investment in better health, decreasing crime, etc. The economic productivity arguments need to be stronger.”

Similarly, the convener of a Toronto affordable housing alliance, and one of the few people under the age of 40 I interviewed, stated: “We need to create a new narrative … Housing is not seen as a public good and not seen as public infrastructure … Definitely [we are] talking about economic productivity … we aren’t just talking about homelessness.” Another interview participant who emphasized persuasive messaging for effective negotiations was the Toronto local government planner: “We talk about the benefits of social inclusion, social determinants of health, and income diversity. I think diversity is valued in Toronto.” She then mused that even “income diversity” with communities was not universally accepted as a goal: “It does become a question of how much diversity.”

Combining a needs-based and interest-based approach worked for a Vancouver philanthropic investor, who echoed several respondents in saying:

You have to use what will get a good donor response. I’m uncomfortable about the economic arguments – it isn’t like you are going to close down emergency room beds if you get the homeless off the streets, although you will use that resource better … It is about allowing people to reach their potential. Some will become tax contributing citizens, others will find that very difficult … Donors want to know whether people are “graduating” from services – the need can’t continue to grow infinitely.

While goals such as “reduced crime,” “healthy communities” and “social inclusion” are based in an understanding of complex human needs, they are also being explicitly linked to a neoliberal project of infinitely expanding economic growth.

Pragmatic Arguments for Affordable Housing

Several respondents, from a Portland investment organization to the Toronto limited equity developer who did not receive direct government grants, argued that, as for-profit organizations, rights talk had little to do with their affordable housing mandates.

One of the more articulate arguments for a utilitarian “needs talk” approach was a private developer using Low Income Housing Tax Credits to provide affordable family housing in central Portland:

I think the focus should be on [affordable housing] production. Not who owns it, or equity, or the other things the City asks for. In the state’s massive, 300 page, “streamlined” call for proposals a couple of years ago, there was nothing about cost effectiveness. It isn’t even the last thing on the list. It isn’t on the list … Tenants actually don’t come in asking whether you are doing God’s business. They want a decent place to live.

Conclusion: What Talk Leads to Action?

This article concludes with no easy answers to the questions it raises. Is it possible to work towards the goal of “access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing” (United Nations 2015, clause 11.1) without using the term “right to housing” explicitly in cross-sectoral alliances? Is it preferable for needs claims, based on an understanding of justice and the public good, to “be negotiated through trade-offs” and not simply “left at the level of particular Articles in a Declaration” (Attoh 2011, 672)? Can the social costs and benefits of housing be calculated in a way that attracts “overlapping consensus” in a universalist manner (Nussbaum 2000, 6)? Does explicit talk about the right to housing (“God’s business,” in the words of one private developer) really matter when the concrete challenge is to improve life chances for people simply needing “a decent place to live?”

Aalbers (2015) develops a tripartitate periodization of increasingly globalized housing markets over the past century, linking the material aspects of housing production and finance to discourse. The Fordist period of “housing for the masses” swung into full force after World War II, with strong government engagement in both suburban homeownership and subsidized rental housing. This was the period in which housing was established as a right in the UN Declaration. By the 1980s, a post-Fordist or neoliberal approach took hold in Western countries, formerly Communist countries and emerging giants such as China. This market-based ideology stressed household capital accumulation through rapidly expanding debt, and fuelled increasing social inequalities, including inequalities in access to affordable and secure shelter. The neoliberal period coincides with productivity arguments trumping rights arguments in housing debates. Most recently, the Global Financial Crisis has exposed the limits to financialization of housing. While austerity urban politics attempts to restore money flows to finance and real estate, the increasing necessity of focusing on housing as a core need and “real good” could signal a return to strong government involvement in housing markets.

In this article, I suggest that most of my informants are trapped by the neoliberal discursive dismantling of the right to housing that occurred in the three decades following the 1980s. The philanthropic social investors in all four cities argued that while they personally believed in housing as a right, their organizations believe that heart-tugging stories of need or heart-warming stories of individual transformation work better in reaching donors and social investors. Four of five private sector development informants felt that focusing on the right to housing was, at best, a distraction from their real work, and quite possibly, not even a “real right.” The implicit assumption of these actors is that affordable housing was one of a set of competing claims to be resolved by markets.

Similarly, eight local and state government planners argued, in various ways, for a “realpolitik” approach. They emphasized the importance of negotiation and persuasion, using need or productivity arguments, over championing a right that is not universally accepted. Most nonprofit community housing providers interviewed in all four cities, with the exception of one interview participant in Toronto and one in Melbourne, felt that speaking about the right to housing was divisive politically and ineffective in terms of improving poor people’s lives. What this points to is an absence of political will and government leadership. It does appear that rights talk is a fundamental challenge to capitalism, or at least the neoliberal formulation of capitalism that held such sway over three decades.

The sense from the interviews in Portland and Vancouver was that I was rehashing some long-standing arguments that had already occurred within partnerships. Most of the interview participants had worked for over 20 years in the affordable housing sector, and most were members of the same coalitions, with 4–10-year histories in these collaborative partnerships. They saw rights talk as a barrier to efficacious action.

In contrast, Melbourne and Toronto had the outliers in both directions. Two affordable housing actors who argued unequivocally for the right to housing came from Melbourne, and the two who combined rights approaches and economic productivity talk came from Toronto. The state government informant who unblushingly differentiated between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor was based in Toronto, and the two informants who used zero-sum game scarcity arguments to shut down rights talk came from Melbourne. While many of the interviewees in Toronto and Melbourne had long-standing histories in the affordable housing industry, the collaborative partnerships they worked within were nascent, only 1–3 years old. The production of a consensual ideology was hampered by the absence of a partnership approach.

Even if lack of affordable housing in the Global North is a matter of “political will” rather than “lack of resources” (Toronto community housing provider), there appears to be a limited pool of key housing actors willing to use “the right to housing” as a “rallying point for allies” (Portland regional housing officer). To some degree, this finding reinforces the argument used by Allmendinger and Haughton (2012), that collaborative partnerships paper over necessary agonism.

But other perspectives are also possible. Good partnerships develop shared understandings that allow lasting change to occur (Innes and Booher 2010). The hybridization of rights, needs and money talks in these interviews suggest a more nuanced understanding than the simplistic “right to shelter” correctly dismissed by both Fraser (1989b) and several interview participants.

Perhaps there is potential for “thinking individuals to find common ground” (Fainstein 2010, 11) around the concept of affordable housing as a component of “the just city,” as a way to reduce suffering, protect human life, develop capabilities – rights talk by another name. The Vancouver and Melbourne credit union interview participants both spoke of “social justice” as a core value for their clients, and the Toronto local government representative spoke of strong support among voters for positive health outcomes and income diversity. This rights talk must, of course, go beyond abstract “justice” into meeting specific needs. Both the Portland social investor and the Vancouver community housing advocate spoke of the importance of story-telling and encounter with the residents of affordable housing in breaking down stereotypes of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. For them, an abstract right was less effective than talking about the concrete safety needs of women and children, the obligations owed by society to older people, the difference that secure housing makes to low-income youths’ potential. As Williams (2016) points out, an “ethics of care” approach focuses on the here and now. It may be more incremental and less radical, but it can lead to gains that “although not structurally transformative … might add to pressure for restructuring capitalism into a more humane system” (Fainstein 2010, 6).

Productivity talk, for all its utilitarianism, also has potential to drive positive action. The problem with the discourse of productivity, as recognized by the UN Declaration, Nussbaum (2011) and some of the interview participants, is that many people are not economically productive and some are likely never to become so: children and their mostly female caregiving parents; many adults, particularly in an ageing society, with severe physical and cognitive impairments, and their mostly female caregiving family members. Any population health-based calculation of economic costs and benefits of an intervention will provide a lower value to these human lives excluded from a monetary exchange-based economy (Gold, Stevenson and Fryback 2002). However, it is also true that a cost–benefit discourse of “better to provide supportive housing than more hospital/prison/emergency shelter beds” might work in some cases in relation to the need for affordable housing for some population groups (homeless men, and to a lesser extent homeless women). It is possible to expand a cost–benefit analysis to include social and environmental benefits of providing adequate housing, although this analysis is still very nascent (but see City of San Francisco 2016 and Witte 2017). Money talk might be grafted onto a hybrid of rights and needs talk, without harming the essence of the other two.

It is possible that a hybrid of rights, needs and money talk might move affordable housing debates forward, particularly if money talk can be de-coupled from the dual risks of “scarcity talk” and putting an economic value on a human life. Affordable housing policies and programmes need the fundamental challenge of rights talk as part of a global rethink of how best to address growing economic disparities caused by neoliberalism. They need explicit and detailed articulation of how the contrasting needs of, say, a 70-year-old single woman with mental health issues, an 18-year-old man aging out of foster care and a couple in their thirties with one full-time job and two young children, might be accommodated appropriately and in locations that enable their various capabilities. Policies and programmes themselves need an honest reckoning of costs as well as benefits, including a critical analysis of the unstated premise that affordable housing is a “zero-sum game.” And, to be successfully produced at the scale required, they need shared understandings between all levels of government, housing providers and financers. Whether rights, needs or money talk, or a hybridization of all three, the talk needs to inspire backbone and collective action towards housing for all.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Brotherhood of St. Lawrence, Launch Housing and the Melbourne School of Design, who have supported the Transforming Housing Research Network in its current phase. She would also like to thank four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and patience.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was undertaken as part of the Transforming Housing research network, funded by the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Brotherhood of St. Lawrence, Launch Housing, the City of Melbourne, and the Melbourne School of Design.

Author Biography

Carolyn Whitzman is professor in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include integrated planning for affordable housing and social infrastructure; improving access to public space for women, children, and people with disability; and collaborative planning partnerships.

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