Okay I have legit never once thought about this before (s/o to Michael Stone + @Harvard_JCHS for makin' me think) but 'housing affordability' is a crazy phenomenon that we just accept as a way of measuring when we don't really stop and think ~what it measures and why. (1/)

Affordability isn't a characteristic of housing, it's a relationship b/w housing and people [S/O Michael Stone]. For people like Jeff Bezos, all housing is affordable. For people like the homeless, no housing is affordable unless it's free. So Stone advises we ask 3.5 things (2/)

For #Housing: 1) Affordable to whom? 2) On what standard of affordability? 3) For how long? --and 3.5) Meeting what physical standards? “Affordable housing” became a thing in the 1980s as a retreat from public responsibility for the plight of the poor while class struggle (3/)

moved up the income distribution. Anymore, #AffordableHousing practically just represents a ton of different forms/levels of below-market housing, not necessarily that of actual affordability. Then, when it comes to the physical standards of housing, like mold, deterioration (4/)

ppl typically live in these situations b/c they can't afford livable housing conditions. If the cost of satisfactory housing exceeds what ppl can afford, then it's reasonable 2call this an affordability problem even tho it's not revealed by economic affordability standards. (5/)

Yet we still constantly measure affordability by comparing strictly housing costs to strictly incomes (the latter, granted, *does* inform/limit a LOT of choices). B/c we treat housing as a commodity, we measure affordability & housing like we'd measure damages in a lawsuit. (6/)

Housing affordability/ #AffordableHousing problems cannot be explained & quantified as *just* income problems. It's an important tracking metric; it's certainly a *part* of the solution 4now, but looking at income w/o context in relation 2housing types w/o context is stupid (7/7)

SIDENOTE: It's not happenstance that the term 'affordable housing' came around when the public/gov was trying to distance itself from responsibility to the plight of the poor WHILE a ton of info was coming out/studies were done ~how the gov created ghettos b/c housing segregation