ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersection of property rights and the ongoing availability of affordable housing. It also explores the relationship between wealth creation through homeownership for lower income homeowners and the preservation of affordability for future potential buyers of that housing. This intersection arises most directly in the context of what is known as shared equity housing. Shared equity housing removes one of the major sticks from the theoretical bundle of sticks normally thought in Western mythology to be part of the concept of ownership. The author goal in this chapter is not to develop an overarching definition of property or to suggest that we adopt the definition offered by the other cultures or by the theorists to whom the author refer. The author argues that this normative prescription is well within the concept of property as it is currently implemented in American society.
