Housing beyond land rent?: A critique of market housing solutionism

Abstract

Toronto is in a housing crisis. Many residents lack access to adequate and affordable housing. In response, neoliberals and reformers have radicalized their advocacy for more market housing as the only possible alternative. Drawing attention to the role housing plays in the reproduction of labour power and the crisis-ridden dynamic of capital accumulation, we highlight the inability of market housing to meet a range of social needs. We tackle crucial weaknesses of the housing supply argument, including, first, its quantitative orientation; second, its impatience with those who defend existing housing options; third, its historical amnesia; fourth; its pop-economist (mis-)understanding of housing markets; fifth, its superficial critique of zoning, and sixth, its illusory embrace of seemingly alternative ways of organizing housing spatially: mixed-use and inclusionary zoning. Reflecting on the recent municipal by-election in Toronto, we also consider what it would take to shift course towards decommodified and decolonial housing futures.