So we were surprised to hear about the “renaissance” of public housing in the capital, celebrated in an exhibition by the New London Architecture Foundation, an independent body set up to support conversations about London’s architecture.

But it turned out that the public housing being showcased was essentially not public housing at all. It is true that for the first time in 40 years, substantial numbers of homes are starting to be delivered directly by councils. But this exhibition defined public housing as “homes built, generally by local authorities directly, via special purpose vehicles, or in partnership, on public land and/or with an element of public subsidy”. This is problematic, not just because it includes public-private partnerships, but because it stretches the parameters so far as to make them essentially meaningless.

This erosion of meaning is typical of the current post-truth era. The term “affordable housing”, for instance, has become notoriously hollow. It is generally applied to properties for rent or sale at 80% of local market rates, which makes them unaffordable for most people, especially in high-cost cities like London.

One example celebrated by the foundation as part of the supposed renaissance is Chobham Manor, in the Olympic Park in Stratford, which will include up to 6,800 new homes. As part of its quota of “affordable” housing, 79 of the first 259 homes will be shared ownership properties, starting at £115,000 for a 25% share of a one-bedroom flat.

Similarly, two-bedroom shared ownership flats in one of the Olympic Park’s newest developments, Stratford Central, start at £130,000 for a 25% share – around twice as much as buying a private two-bedroom flat in the area, which start from about £260,000.

And while shared ownership tenants purchase a percentage of the property, they pay all the service charges as well as rental costs on the remaining percentage, so monthly costs are higher than for a comparable private property.

The exhibition also highlighted estate regeneration, a controversial practice of decanting residents and demolishing council estates to make way for more densely-built properties, most of which are sold or rented at market rates. In 2015, the London Assembly found that from 2005-2015 there was a net loss of 8,000 social rented homes due to such schemes.
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Estates such as Woodberry Down in Manor House are seen by the foundation as examples of new forms of public housing investment. Defining them in this way is presumably justified by the “affordable” housing they include. At Woodberry Down, 43% of housing is apparently to be affordable, but 53% of those homes are for shared ownership rather than social rent.

Developments like this can be more accurately understood as an exercise in state-led gentrification. In Hackney, 645 socially rented homes were lost due to the regeneration of Woodberry Down, and private properties on the development are priced from £555,000 to £1m.

Meanwhile, Lewisham council has announced a new developmentthat will include 100 properties ambiguously labelled as council social homes. This new term suggested the homes would be let at traditional council rent levels, but in fact, these rents will be £50-£60 a week higher than existing levels.

We are very concerned about this shifting use of language. Shaking the terms “public” and “affordable” loose from their original meaning allows the government and property developers to deflect accusations that they are not providing enough affordable housing. It redefines the increasing involvement of the private sector and the prioritisation of profit in public housing provision as solutions for the housing crisis, rather than contributing towards it.

The desperate lack of social housing and prohibitive prices of homes for private sale and rental have been caused by the sell-off of social housing and the transfer of power to private developers, whose agenda will only ever be profit.

Yet the government seems to be trying to redress this by extending rather than countering that approach – investing in schemes that result in net losses in social housing and subsidise developers building expensive properties.

Trying to solve a problem with the same actions that caused it is either plain stupid, or evidence of a lack of desire to solve it at all.

Mel Nowicki is lecturer in urban geography, department of social sciences, Oxford Brookes University. Ella Harris is a postdoctoral researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London.