Our Pluralist Housing Ethics and Public-Private Partnerships for Affordable Housing

Abstract:     
While affordable housing has been produced through a variety of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for many decades, this fact is garnering new and increasing attention by legal and policy analysts. This chapter considers how this new attention may affect the future of America's affordable housing movement through the lens of our pluralist housing ethics: (1) Housing as an Economic Good, (2) Housing as Home, (3) Housing as a Human Right, (4) Housing as Providing Social Order, and (5) Housing as One Land Use in a Functional System. (The housing ethics framework was first explicated in Tim Iglesias, Our Pluralist Housing Ethics and the Struggle for Affordable Housing, 42 Wake Forest L. Rev. 511 (2007).) After defining a housing ethic, this chapter briefly explains our five housing ethics and reflects on our housing ethics pluralism. Then, after analyzing the PPP phenomenon using this framework, the chapter concludes that development of affordable housing through the form of PPPs presents important and even historic opportunities for affordable housing development but also substantial risks. Specifically, the proliferation of affordable housing PPPs could engender increased subsidies, continued experimentation with creative methods of developing affordable housing, improved public perceptions of affordable housing, and, most importantly, a fundamental repositioning of affordable housing in legal and policy debates. However, this phenomenon could also lead to the opposite outcomes.

Keywords: affordable housing, public-private partnerships, housing ethics

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