ABSTRACT This article examines how UK political and financial elites construct and legitimize the marginalization of “mortgage prisoners” – homeowners trapped in closed-book mortgages and unable to remortgage. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis of 55 texts (2007–2025), it identifies three discursive practices that emerged sequentially and underpin policy (in)action. Initially, elites downplayed distinctions between active and inactive lenders, legitimizing privatization and obscuring structural drivers of harm. Subsequently, FCA-led segmentation by payment status and credit-scores gave rise to variegated debt moralities that differentiated “deserving” borrowers from those subject to default stigma. Finally, invocations of “moral hazard” framed intervention as unfair, reinforcing fiscal restraint and market primacy. Bringing housing-class theory into dialogue with financialized subjectivities and credit-score governance, the article shows how stigma and moral classification operate within the homeowners-with-mortgages class, reshaping hierarchies of responsibility and deservingness and deepening intra-cohort housing inequality.

While nonhuman animals are often described as family, beloved, irreplaceable when fulfilling a companion animal role, they sit in a complex socio-legal context that does not value them as subjects of a life, but rather as optional appendages to the humans who own them. While this description may not resonate with the depth of emotion and strength of relational ties many humans share with their animal companions, in the context of dwindling housing stock, rising rents and increasing precarity of tenure, the disposability of companion animals upheld at a society level cannot be ignored. This article traces the experiences of tenants and housing stakeholders attempting to navigate the South Australian rental market to secure accommodation for multispecies families. In doing so it furthers existing work calling to situate experiences of housing inequality in their policy and structural contexts by explicitly articulating the intersection between anthroparchy (systemic speciesist domination) and capitalism. I conclude by arguing that despite recent legislative changes around multispecies tenancies, in the current structural context multispecies housing is, and can only ever be, precarious.

This study proposes a theoretical model that integrates important mediating and moderating effects to explain whether and how homeownership is potentially linked to health in today's Canadian society. This integrative model examines (1) whether the link between homeownership and health is moderated by housing cost (especially housing unaffordability) and (2) whether the homeownership-health link can be explained by the three mechanisms represented by three satisfaction perceptions-housing satisfaction, community satisfaction and life satisfaction-that stress homeownership's material, social and symbolic values, respectively. Guided by the theoretical model, the analyses of the 2021 Canadian Housing Survey data generate important insights. First, there is clear evidence that homeownership is significantly related to better health in Canada and that this link is not diminished by unaffordability. Second, homeownership is not directly linked with health, and the revealed link can be attributed to the three mechanisms. These underlying mechanisms, supported by empirical evidence, can explain how homeownership is related to better health and shed light on how housing inequality may translate into health disparity.

The essay summarizes the data collected in a research, which is still in progress, conducted by the Tempi Moderni study centre on the condition of the Rom communities in Italy. It is based on two fundamental theses. First of all, on the fact that the system of inequalities experienced by Rom people is multidimensional. These dimensions influence each other on a material level and turn the relationship between cause and effect, legitimising widespread prejudice and discrimination against the Rom community. These prejudices are reconstructed also from a historical point of view, and the essay focuses mainly on employment and housing inequality. The second thesis analyzes the system of complex disparities affecting Rom communities within the system of inequalities and discriminations typical of Italian and global society. Inequality, poverty and work segregation are therefore the consequences of political choices aimed at marginalizing the numerous Rom communities and legitimizing widespread and dangerous commonplaces and prejudices.

Housing inequalities remain a persistent global challenge, significantly exacerbating poverty and limiting access to fundamental human rights. This systematic literature review explores the recent global challenges and solutions in addressing housing inequalities, focusing on their intersections with poverty. Utilizing the PRISMA methodology, we conducted an advanced search using Scopus and Web of Science databases to ensure comprehensive and high-quality coverage of relevant literature. After screening and eligibility assessments, 35 primary studies were identified and analyzed. The findings were divided into three themes which are (1) housing and structural inequalities, (2) housing as a social and economic Tool, (3) housing and accessibility Challenges. In order to lessen housing disparities and poverty, this review highlights the significance of inclusive housing policies, community-led projects, and creative funding methods. Furthermore, it became clear that sustainable techniques and interdisciplinary partnerships were essential to attaining fair housing results. In addition to pointing out important knowledge gaps, this review also urges further study on regional differences and how housing disparity is impacted by climate change. This study offers practical insights for practitioners, researchers, and policymakers seeking to develop sustainable and equitable housing solutions by combining global viewpoints.

ABSTRACT This article analyses and evaluates Fianna Fáil’s ‘progressive republican’ cross-class ideological strategy between 2011 and 2024 after the economic crisis and electoral collapse in 2011. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony, it demonstrates how the party reconstructed strategically ‘national-popular’ identity (i.e. republicanism) and ‘common sense’ values (i.e. ‘fairness’) to attempt to rebuild ideologically a cross-class alliance – the historic foundation of its hegemony. Party leader speeches, party literature and policy documents are analysed to show how its ‘progressive republican’ collective identity and core values framed a new programme. It argues that the strategy yielded a partial recovery but ultimately failed at the implementation stage as it was unable and unwilling to transform substantially the structural effects of Fianna Fáil’s previous neoliberal policies. The latter created deep class contradictions and inequalities in housing and health provision for low- and median-income workers. This meant the limited concessions actually implemented post-2020 were ineffective in winning their consent. I thus conclude that the era of Fianna Fáil one-party hegemony is finally over. The article also defends class and ideological analysis in the light of this application maintaining against existing scholarship that it can provide insights into Fianna Fáil and wider Irish party politics.

This article examines how housing unaffordability in Luxembourg drives displacement and contributes to the emergence of cross-border gentrification along Luxembourg’s borders, examined here through the case of two neighbouring French towns. Housing pressures push some Luxembourg residents to relocate across the border and lead other workers employed in Luxembourg to settle there as well. From economic, exclusionary, and social forms of displacement, cross-border gentrification emerges as income disparities and restricted housing access reshape local housing markets. These dynamics are further reinforced by French state-led redevelopment operations designed to accommodate cross-border demand, where higher housing prices risk exacerbating existing inequalities. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with residents, landlords, and housing professionals, the study identifies cross-border gentrification as a mechanism through which housing inequalities and residential mobility operate across state boundaries, reproducing persistent centre–periphery interdependencies in a European context.

This paper explores London’s continuous cruising community through Polanyi’s double movement theory, analysing how boat dwellers navigate between market commodification of waterways and collective practices of protection and re-embedding. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research, participant observation, and reflexive thematic analysis, we explore how itinerant liveaboards negotiate semi-off-grid living as both a technical infrastructure withdrawal and a vernacular resistance to the housing market. Our paper reveals mobile precarity as a governance condition produced by strategic neglect of infrastructure, the removal of mooring spaces, rising license fees, and intensified enforcement. The commercialisation strategy through Water Safety Zones and “eco-mooring” schemes demonstrates how environmental discourse legitimises displacement. Yet community responses transcend simple coping through practices of mutual aid, cross-class solidarity, and collective resistance that we theorise as everyday decommodification. The paper makes three contributions: extending Polanyian analysis to mobile housing contexts; reframing off-grid living as mundane politics rather than spectacular lifestyle; and positioning dignity as an analytical bridge between precarity and value transformation. By disrupting the terra-centric/aquatic divide that structures urban theory, we reveal how spatial assumptions about land-as-property versus water-as-flow sustain both the metabolic rift and housing inequality. The paper demonstrates that inclusive urban futures require recognising waterways as legitimate dwelling spaces deserving of infrastructural rights, not mere leisure commodities subject to market pricing.

Affordable homeownership schemes aim to mitigate housing inequalities and broaden access to homeownership among low-to-middle-income households. In urban China, affordable homeownership governance followed a path-dependent market logic institutionalised since the late 1990s, frequently generating dysfunctions and conflicts. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed these governance failures and necessitated renewed state intervention, constituting a critical juncture. Building on a case study of Xinjia Yuan, a state-led affordable homeownership scheme in Shanghai, this article examines how governance practices evolved and adapted to China’s broader governance transformations before, during, and after the pandemic. The study draws on historical institutionalism to analyse how grassroots actors developed informal practices amid the path dependence of state entrepreneurialism and the critical juncture of state reassertion. The findings reveal how informal practices among grassroots actors gained legitimacy over time. While direct state intervention sustained market-oriented governance frameworks, the pandemic outbreak reasserted grassroots party-state authority, further facilitating the state-led mobilisation of active residents to address market limitations in the post-pandemic era. This article offers critical insights into governance transitions in affordable housing management by highlighting the grassroots state’s role as an essential safety net and extending the analytical lens to grassroots adaptive practices.

Like many high-income countries, England is experiencing a housing crisis, where conditions around housing availability and affordability are contributing to housing insecurity. Housing insecurity can be understood as experiencing, or being at risk of, forced and multiple housing moves. Our study explores families’ experiences and navigation of housing insecurity, drawing on the perspectives of families and professional practitioners. We undertook 78 interviews with 81 participants (43 practitioners involved in housing support, and 38 parents and children who had experienced housing insecurity). Data analysis generated three themes which provide insight into families’ experiences of housing insecurity: (i) navigating limited options and forced choices, (ii) trying to maintain normality, and, (iii) struggling to maintain hope. Our findings highlight how housing insecurity produces a pervasive state of uncertainty for families, marked by forced and frequent moves, limited choices, disrupted routines, and hopelessness. Further, our article discusses how the combined concepts of structural violence and slow violence produce a useful lens for understanding families’ experiences of housing insecurity, and explanation of why inequalities in housing are produced and how harm unfolds and endures over time. This can help to move towards appreciating the social, economic, and political forces that create and maintain housing inequalities.

In modern capitalist systems, housing has shifted from a basic human need to a financialized commodity central to wealth accumulation. This transformation has worsened the housing affordability crisis and deepened social inequality, as market dynamics increasingly diverge from household income growth. This study investigates how housing policies can serve as corrective tools to counteract these market-driven inequities, examining the commodification of housing, its role in structural inequality, and policy responses in both the Global North and South. Grounded in political economy and Marxian theory, the study shows that intergenerational wealth transfer, spatial property value disparities, and market-oriented policies perpetuate housing inequality. Since the late 1970s, privatization and deregulation have weakened the state’s role in housing provision, marginalizing vulnerable groups. However, state-led interventions such as social housing, anti-speculation measures, and tenant protections offer partial remedies, though limited by fiscal and political constraints. The evolving trajectory of housing policy reflects a persistent tension between market logic and state responsibility amid rapid urbanization. The study advocates for hybrid policy frameworks that balance market functions with strengthened state capacity to ensure equitable housing access. Reframing housing as a social right, not merely an economic good, is crucial for advancing just and sustainable urban futures, particularly in developing countries.

Spatial disparities in housing values during the Great Depression reflect not only regional housing market conditions but also deeper inequalities in economic opportunity, social infrastructure, and environmental resilience that are central to place-based sustainability. Despite extensive research on housing inequality during this period, spatial disparities in housing values—particularly in relation to race beyond the neighborhood level—remain underexplored. This study examines county-level spatial disparities in housing values in the United States between 1930 and 1940, framing housing values as an indicator of place-based sustainability. Using spatial visualization, global and local spatial econometric models, and Multi-Scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR), we analyze how economic shocks, environmental stressors, and socioeconomic and demographic factors jointly shaped uneven housing outcomes across space. Our findings reveal distinct regional trends: higher housing values were concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, while lower values prevailed in the Mountain and Southern regions. Housing values declined from 1930 to 1940, with the Dust Bowl intensifying losses in affected areas. Socioeconomic factors, such as higher illiteracy and unemployment rates, were associated with lower housing values, whereas higher retail sales per capita, a proxy for income, were linked to higher values. Housing values also varied significantly by racial and nativity composition, with persistent disparities disadvantaging Black and other minority populations relative to native White populations within the same regions. By quantifying spatial inequality and identifying uneven regional vulnerability and resilience during a major historical crisis, this study contributes a place-based sustainability perspective on long-term housing inequality and its structural roots.

Abstract With sustained house price inflation in recent decades undermining the capacities of many younger people to form independent households, intergenerational relations have intensified, with increasing pressure on parents to assist their offspring, especially in supporting homebuying. This paper examines realignment between generations around transfers and the role of housing systems, policies and practices therein. Whilst recent research emphasises the experiences of young receivers, this paper addresses the impact on, and roles of, parent givers. We focus on Hong Kong as a remarkably tight housing market with high concentrations of older-cohorts in both homeownership and public rental housing, as well as very limited housing access for younger-cohorts. Our analysis builds on a quantitative survey of 1,012 parents co-residing with adult-children (aged 25–35 years), complemented by qualitative interviews with a small sub-sample of respondents. Our findings not only demonstrate the impact of intergenerational housing inequalities on family practices, but also how housing, welfare and policy transformations are shaping both intergenerational responsibilities and expectations of government.

What are the political consequences of vacant homes? While housing inequality and speculation have received growing attention in political science, the democratic implications of housing vacancy remain understudied. This study examines how vacancy, which has become an increasingly visible marker of demographic decline and spatial marginalization, affects voter turnout across 252 administrative districts in South Korea between 2016 and 2022. The analysis reveals a consistent and statistically significant negative relationship between housing vacancy and turnout. Vacancy not only reflects structural disadvantage but also undermines political efficacy, social capital, and local mobilization networks. These findings suggest that vacancy is more than an economic indicator; it functions as a spatial mechanism of political disengagement. This study underscores the importance of incorporating built environment conditions into models of political behavior and invites further research on how material decline shapes democratic participation at the territorial margins.

Refugees in the United States are being resettled in low-income urban neighborhoods with long histories of housing instability and racialized poverty, and where struggles over inequality and belonging shape everyday experiences. While prior research emphasizes the structural challenges refugees face and their strategies of legal and social claims-making, few studies explore how these processes unfold within urban housing systems where race and space are deeply contested. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Syrian refugees in northern New Jersey, this study shows how refugees navigate racialized housing institutions and mobilize collective claims for improved living conditions. Newly arriving refugees, like their long-term minoritized neighbors, encountered persistent barriers to safe and affordable housing. With nonprofit support, refugee families pursuing legal claims against exploitative landlords built alliances with other marginalized tenants, resisting housing inequality and challenging their incorporation into racialized urban poverty. By tracing these everyday collaborations, the study reveals how interracial alliances emerge through shared struggles, reshaping race relations and creating spaces where refugees expand agency, build collective belonging, and contest the intertwined inequalities of race, space, and place. These findings uncover an alternative pathway to integration rooted not only in formal state resources but also in grassroots interracial collaboration within marginalized urban communities.

We assess the increasingly prevalent assertion that energy poverty in high-income countries disproportionately affects women and households with a migration background. Much of the existing evidence supporting this claim is non-causal and often fails to disentangle the effects of income. To address these limitations, we apply both descriptive statistical methods and a two-stage logistic regression analysis to comprehensive, high-quality administrative microdata covering nearly 90 % of Dutch households. We examine how gender, migration background, income, and housing characteristics interact to shape energy poverty outcomes. Our key finding is that what initially appears as a gender or migration bias in energy poverty statistics is, in fact, primarily a reflection of income disparities across these demographic groups. Beyond income, our results also highlight the importance of spatial, institutional, and behavioral factors in shaping vulnerability. In particular, we find that the relatively high energy quality of social housing in the Netherlands mitigates the risk that women and migrants—despite a gender and migration pay gap—end up in energy poverty. We also identify differences in energy poverty subtypes: women are more exposed to combinedenergy poverty (energy-inefficient housing and high energy costs), while men are more likely to exhibit hidden energy poverty (energy-inefficient housing but low energy costs). These findings underscore the importance of addressing structural inequalities in income and housing beyond the energy domain when designing effective policies to reduce energy poverty. A just and inclusive energy transition will therefore depend on addressing the broader socio-economic and institutional conditions that underlie energy poverty. • We analyze energy poverty biases using administrative microdata for 88 % of Dutch households. • Apparent gender and migration biases in energy poverty are largely income-driven. • Social housing mitigates energy poverty risks for women and migrant households. • Effective policy must address structural income and housing inequalities.

IntroductionSocial housing plays a critical role in addressing housing inequality and promoting well-being. This paper examines the creation of a registry of social housing sites across all six Ontario Health (OH) regions.MethodsFor all 47 housing service providers in Ontario, social housing address, provider type, and building type were extracted from their website or from documents provided by the housing organization. The Registry included rent-geared-to-income housing with unique or minimally shared postal codes. Descriptive statistics were analyzed for the housing site characteristics aggregated by OH region.Results2,109 social housing sites were included in the final Registry, including 472 designated as seniors only (low-income naturally occurring retirement communities, LI-NORCs). There were regional differences in the proportions of each tenant designation, postal code uniqueness, housing provider types, and building classifications. For instance, the Toronto and North West regions had higher government-owned social housing sites (61% and 57%), whereas the East region had more non-profit owned sites (55%). Apartments were the most common building type across regions (57%), with varying proportions of townhouses and single/semi-detached houses.DiscussionA social housing registry, the SHO, has been established, serving as a valuable resource for health research, especially for marginalized populations. It can be linked to other datasets for future studies. The SHO Registry provides a robust method for the determination of LI-NORCs (low-income naturally occurring retirement communities).

Rapid urbanization in metropolitan cities such as Jakarta has resulted in a growing disparity in house prices between the city center and suburban areas. This present study examines the economic determinants of housing unaffordability, with a focus on Gross Domestic Regional Product (GDRP) and Construction Expensiveness Index (CCI). This study employs a case study of the Jakarta and West Java regions to analyze the impact of these economic indicators on housing affordability and the extending gap between urban and peri-urban areas. The study indicates that higher construction costs in urban centers substantially worsen affordability challenges. Additionally, the study explores the question whether migration to suburban areas represents a significant trend and potential policy measure to address this disparity. The results of the study highlight the interconnectedness of economic growth, construction costs, and affordable housing availability in both urban and suburban contexts. To mitigate housing inequality and foster equitable regional development, this paper proposes policy interventions such as zoning reforms, enhanced public transportation infrastructure, and alternative housing models like Rent-to-Own (RTO).

The growing urgency of climate change and persistent housing inequality have intensified the need for sustainable affordable housing (SAH). This study aims to examine research trends linking housing and sustainability, identify key barriers to SAH development, and propose effective strategies to address these challenges. Using bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review (SLR), studies were retrieved through an advanced search of the Scopus and Mendeley databases, yielding 14 articles for detailed analysis. The findings indicate that construction innovation inefficiencies, ineffective policies, and financial constraints remain major impediments to SAH implementation. By synthesising existing evidence, this study provides strategic insights to support policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in advancing sustainable, affordable, and inclusive housing development.

The article reviews Ricardo Tranjan’s book The Tenant Class (2023), which examines housing inequality and class relations within the rental housing market. The study aligns with current developments in Canadian housing sociology, a field that is undergoing a period of active institutionalization and theoretical renewal. Tranjan advances the Marxist political economy tradition, conceptualizing tenants as a social class subjected to economic exploitation by landlords, and argues that Canada’s so-called housing crisis is not an accidental phenomenon but a stable system of power and income redistribution. The review notes that, despite the book’s conceptual proximity to the housing class theory of J.Rex and R.Moore, Tranjan does not explicitly engage with their framework, limiting his analysis to the categories of class struggle and exploitation. This narrows the book’s theoretical depth but enhances its political relevance and public resonance. The work is regarded as an important contribution to housing sociology, reintroducing the notion of “class” into both academic and public discourse and uncovering the political foundations of housing inequality. The book may be of interest to sociologists, scholars of social policy and urban studies, as well as educators and housing activists concerned with issues of affordability and tenant organizing.