An intriguing policy and advocacy case in the quest for the affordable US-City

Abstract

until prices rise again. There is nothing in Phillips’ impressive toolkit of interventions that addresses corporate power and financialisation. While he calls for more public subsidy to build or acquire affordable homes, especially as a form of countercyclical state intervention, he refuses to countenance the most obvious and historically-proven measure of addressing market failure in housing: direct state intervention to break up corporate monopolies, buy land, build homes and rent direct to tenants as public housing on a not-for-profit basis. Such a solution may be politically unconscionable in a US context, but given how much of a proactive marketshaping and market-regulating role Phillips envisages for the state in his strategy, surely they are worth a proper consideration in the next edition.