Good Deals for Homebuyers, Not for the Poor: Erasing Poverty from Affordable Housing Discourse

Abstract

The usage of the term affordable housing has changed over time, from meeting the housing needs of the poor, to the relatively unproblematized workings of the home ownership market. Qualitative analysis of media discourse in the Boise, Idaho, metropolitan area, from 1990 to 2009 demonstrates this shift in meaning. The changing construction of affordable housing in the media reifies the importance of homeownership as a primary tenure status and further marginalizes the poor as consumers of housing and as legitimate policy concerns.

Keywords:

• affordable housing
• discourse
• home ownership
• class
• media

Notes

1. The median value of owner occupied units in the Boise Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2009 was $179,800, lower than the national average. However, this figure increased more than the national average during the time period studied, 56.7%, compared to the national 44% increase (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009).

2. The articles were distributed by year as follows: 1990: 23, 1993: 59, 1996: 65, 2000: 34, 2003: 36, 2006: 78, 2009: 54.

3. Few of these terms were used pejoratively, only 3.7% of articles contained negative descriptions of affordable housing. “Subsidized” was depicted as slightly less positive than the others, with 40% of articles using this term neutrally, rather than positively.

4. Realtors and lenders were the most likely social actors to use the term affordable and to refer to reasonable or low prices. Government officials were the most likely to use the term subsidized, and nonprofit organization leaders were the most likely to describe affordable housing as low-income housing.