Social scientists take considerable care in defining their concepts in order to make them more precise. By contrast, the term ‘affordable housing’ is used in such a wide variety of ways by those people in positions of power in relation to housing provision, such as politicians, property developers and planners, that it means just what they want it to mean – just like Humpty Dumpty. Hope for any kind of terminological precision will recede even further as the Coalition Government’s notion of an ‘Affordable Rent’ product becomes established. Common sense usage of the word ‘affordable’ links it to people’s capacity to pay for a particular good or service, a notion that is largely absent from the usage of ‘affordable housing’ in policy circles. The London Tenants Federation’s report The Affordable Housing Con provides a welcome guide through the manifold ways that the much-abused term ‘affordable housing’ hides more than it reveals. The report is essential reading for all those who want to grasp what the failures of current housing policy in London are, and also what genuinely affordable housing might mean for the hundreds of thousands of ill-housed Londoners for whom affordable housing, or rather lack of, means something all too real. Research carried out by Shelter when producing its publication on intermediate housing – ‘The Forgotten Households’, found that the average household income of those accessing part-rent part-buy homes in London is over £33,000 and for those accessing shared equity products (where part of the cost of a home is funded by a shared equity loan repayable on the sale of the property) is over £40,000. Even when it comes to social-rented housing, it is generally accepted that around two-thirds of tenants are unable to meet the cost of their rent without claiming housing benefit. In London, social rents are equivalent to 37% of the average social tenants’ household income compared with 31% outside London.