Horizons in the Housing Struggle

This Atlas was conceived in consultation with Reinhold Martin and served as the base for the academic debate during the week-long “Housing Academy”, held at the HKW in Berlin in 2015. It introduces the reader to the evolution of neoliberal housing from the 1970s to the present.

Since the late nineteenth century, researchers, policy-makers and planners have searched for housing solutions. Nowadays, housing projects are closely connected to global socio-spatial challenges, such as urban equity, vulnerability and resiliency. In the context of these urban challenges, housing emerges as a local, national and global concern influenced by shifting globalized economies and dynamic real estate markets. Thus, housing can no longer be understood as a one-dimensional problem that can be solved by providing more housing units through a top-down mechanism, nor can it be perceived as personal space distinct from national and global contexts. But most studies in housing focus on one issue and explore it from a single perspective, contributing to a complex, specialized and fragmented body of knowledge. This specialization and fragmentation result in the loss of the ability to see the whole picture from its parts. By responding to these issues, this paper aims to establish ...

DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 2015

The struggle for housing, especially by less affl uent groups which are, depending on the perspective, addressed as the “excluded”, “working class”, “oppressed”, “alienated” or “insecure” (Marcuse 2012: 31f.), and the probably most spectacular form of protest and disobedience – squatting – pave the recent history of contentious politics. In the long history of worldwide squatting and struggles for adequate housing, the question of the right to housing together with the right to the city (in the sense of a right to live in a central urban location and not only in social housing estates in peripheral areas of big metropolises) arose all over the world. Since 2011, the indignados movement in Spain, together with the wave of protests in Northern Africa, Turkey, Greece, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina and many other countries, for very different reasons, but always appropriating central urban space, show how contentious politics grew and gained social and political weight in the l...

2021

The academic journal Social Policy (Koinoniki Politiki), published since 2013 by the Hellenic Social Policy Association (EEKP) with the support of Topos Publications, seeks to contribute to the promotion of scholarly study and research into social inequalities and the ways in which they can be tackled. This effort is carried out entirely on a voluntary basis, underlining the commitment of EEKP to serving the above purposes. In this 14th issue, the Board of Directors of EEKP, on the initiative of its President, Associate Professor Costas Dimoulas, invited me to be the guest editor of a special issue on social policy and housing. As part of our effort to strengthen the outward-looking character and the international presence of Koinoniki Politiki, we have invited some of the most important scholars on housing studies in Europe and Greece to contribute to this issue. It is a great honor and a joy for our Journal that such internationally renowned academics have accepted our invitation to contribute to this special issue. Housing and Social Policy The theme of this special issue is social policy and housing inequalities in the European and Greek experience. Housing is an important field of social intervention. It is no coincidence that since the birth of social policy as an academic subject, housing has been one of its five main areas along with social security, health, education and personal care services (Hall, 1952). Access to decent housing is a non-negotiable condition for ensuring social participation and welfare. It is the springboard for meeting a number of important human needs, such as protection from natural and social hazards, health, the storage and use of basic material goods, personal hygiene, work, and the enjoyment of privacy and social relationships. (Clapham et al., 1990). The importance of the home as a good for people's dignified living is of great significance (O'Sullivan, 2020). However, housing stock in modern capitalist societies is produced and distributed primarily through market mechanisms (Harloe, 1995). It is this contradiction that makes housing a wobbly pillar under the welfare state (Torgensen, 1987). Other scholars comment

During the last three decades processes of urban development have spread speedily across the globe, transforming hundreds of cities into primary sites for the implementation of a neoliberal agenda. As expected, this global phenomenon brings with it a number of negative consequences for the lives of disadvantaged urban residents. Privatization and commercialization of public space and housing stocks, increasing gentrification of neighbourhoods and deregulation of the housing sector are only a few examples of the adverse scenario that people from less well-off backgrounds have to face. These processes constitute capital-driven strategies that have been enforced by displacing, evicting, marginalizing and criminalizing communities who are, at the same time excluded from any participation in the decision-making process of the urban restructuring. These actions, carried out by corporations, investors and developers and closely backed up by entrepreneurial governments ) or "centaur-states" (Wacquant, 2012 are embedded in an accelerated process of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2008) that has exacerbated inequality and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The effects of this growing polarization in the distribution of power and wealth can be easily observed in the spatial forms of the cities, in which gated communities, glittering city centre developments and privatized areas under non-stop surveillance coexist in sharp separation with favelas, precarious and informal settlements and impoverished working class neighbourhoods .

Housing, Theory and Society, 2020

This contribution is a reflection on the critical analysis of Mark Stephens of the theoretical work on housing systems by Jim Kemeny. It concludes that the analysis of Stephens is a great incentive to continue the debate on housing and welfare started by Kemeny. The core of the review is that Stephens focusses on the so-called maturation of social rental housing as a replacement of government subsidies: can non-profit housing compete with commercial housing under smart conditions for social sustainability? Stephens is right that this maturation thesis does not hold and he provides convincing evidence for this. However, Stephens contribution neglects an important part of Kemeny's work: the link between housing and more in particular the role of home ownership in welfare states. Here is work to be done! This contribution concludes with emphasizing the link between housing and welfare systems and its underlying ideologies. Rules of the games such as laws for social rental housing are important, but even more important than laws are day to day beliefs among citizens and professionals of what is right and wrong in housing practice. In other words it needs further research to explore the role of housing in practice of populism and COVID19. How do underlying housing ideologies play a role in current practice and how do and can they change policies and practices in housing in different continents? ARTICLE HISTORY

2021

Housing, Theory and Society, 2017

Since the late nineteenth century, researchers, policy-makers and planners have searched for housing solutions. Nowadays, housing projects are closely connected to global socio-spatial challenges, such as urban equity, vulnerability and resiliency. In the context of these urban challenges, housing emerges as a local, national and global concern influenced by shifting globalized economies and dynamic real estate markets. Thus, housing can no longer be understood as a one-dimensional problem that can be solved by providing more housing units through a top-down mechanism, nor can it be perceived as personal space distinct from national and global contexts. But most studies in housing focus on one issue and explore it from a single perspective, contributing to a complex, specialized and fragmented body of knowledge. This specialization and fragmentation result in the loss of the ability to see the whole picture from its parts. By responding to these issues, this paper aims to establish the importance of (1) becoming familiar with the varied levels of housing studies as well as their underlying premises and paradigmatic boundaries and (2) exploring convergences or expansions among these levels as an initial step in establishing possible paths for a research synthesis that can support new research agendas and action strategie.

Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change

The housing challenge is becoming increasingly recognised in international policy discussions 1 ; however, its broader links to the processes of migration, climate change, and economic globalisation are not yet fully understood. Despite the fact that, in principle, housing is recognised as a basic human right and is essential for human development, in practice, securing safe and adequate housing for everyone remains a major global development challenge of the 21 st centuryas pointed out in the two forewords by respectively El Sioufi and Rolnik. Issues associated with housing, such as its scarcity (including the lack of accessible land), affordability and quality, are persistent but changing in magnitude, over time. This book aims to situate housing in relation to the processes of global transformation. In this sense, it highlights the processes of economic globalisation, migration, and climate change as three major dynamics in relation to the global housing crisis. Obviously, there are also further global transformations in place but they are either not yet as widely discussed in terms of their effects on housing (such as information and communication technology) or they include very particular local forms and effects (such as demographic changes). This book is an attempt to identify the influencing dynamics of the three key transformation processes. As such, it does not discuss housing in isolation but rather 1 International agreements address housing and its role in urban development and call for systematic approaches to the housing challenge (Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, with goals to reduce extreme poverty, the Sendai Framework for Disaster

Cidades, Comunidades e Territórios, 2024