On the formation of public housing policy in Russia: A retrospective review of the issue

Abstract

This paper provides a retrospective overview of the debate around the concepts of “affordable housing”, which is the basis for research on the impact of urban zoning and spatial planning on the housing market. The article discusses the main institutional mechanisms of “affordable housing”. It is noted that since housing, being located on land and belonging to land plots, has a number of properties inherent to land as a resource (its quantity is limited and irreproducible, land is non-movable, fixed by location), the free circulation of housing on the market leads to an increase in its exchange value and turns into an investment object. All this leads to a constant rise in prices and a decrease in the affordability of housing, that is, the opposite effect to what the regulator is counting on.