Less than a year out from the congressional midterm elections, President Trump has at times styled himself as an economic populist — signing executive orders against institutional investors in the single-family housing market, floating credit card interest rate caps, and teasing “Trump Accounts” to help Americans build wealth.

Many of these ideas have clear appeal across party lines. Indeed, some of them are borrowed directly from progressives. But Donald Trump’s seriousness about these proposals is highly questionable at best. At a cabinet meeting in late January, for example, the president said off the cuff that he actually wanted to “drive housing prices up,” adding that he would not “destroy the value” of existing homeowners’ property “so that somebody that didn’t work very hard can buy a home.”

For affordable housing advocates, a larger question looms over the particular contradictions of Trump’s presidency: Why should millions of people’s ability to secure a good home depend on the prevailing political winds in the first place? Housing is a basic need, just one step above food and water. A transformative politics would reclaim it as shelter, home, and community — not a financial playground for Wall Street speculators.