Politics Of Housing Research Articles

Spicebags, slippery masks and ‘Free Staters’: anti-republican anti-populism in contemporary Irish political discourse

ABSTRACT This article critically interrogates how in contemporary Irish political discourse anti-populism, specifically anti-left populism, is articulated as a form of anti-republicanism. This is large part due to the histories of anti-colonial republicanism in Ireland and the popular republican grammar they have bequeathed to contemporary political discourse. This thematic of (anti)populist politics is of renewed interest and urgency given the recent surge in popularity of Sinn Féin, a broadly left-wing republican populist party. This article adopts a discourse analytical method and identifies several key tropes of anti-republican anti-populism that centre largely around the framing of Sinn Féin as a non-normative or not-normal political party, given its historical connection to paramilitarism. Other key themes of anti-republican anti-populism include the politics of housing, policing and the nature of democratic representation. What emerges is a picture of Irish republicanism as a spectral remainder of past political struggles against colonial order and political exclusion. As such, republican politics bring into view the contingency of established order and reveals the fragile nature of political legitimacy in post-partition Ireland. This article concludes by commenting on what the Irish postcolony reveals about the nature of anti-populisms in Europe and its peripheries.

‘The rent is too damn high’ meets ‘pay the rent’: practising solidarity with the dispossessed*

This paper reflects on the Housing Justice in Unjust Cities Project that unfolded in so-called brisbane in 2021, in response to concerns over how the framing of demands and solutions to the present housing crisis in so-called australia can reinvest in and further legitimise colonial-carceral-capitalist logics and structures. Using critical co-constructed autoethnography as methodology, the authors reflect on their own involvement in housing struggles as settlers on unceded Aboriginal land, the recent history of these struggles in so-called brisbane, and the lessons and reflections that instigated the Housing Justice in Unjust Cities Project, and which emerged from our experiences organising together. The project, comprising a series of radio interviews and broadcasts followed by a public forum, was an attempt to foreground what ongoing Aboriginal sovereignty means for struggles for housing justice, and to challenge the colonial logics and common sense that often permeates settler-led housing politics. Drawing on Indigenist research approaches and police and prison abolition discourse, we offer some partial reflections on building communities of struggle that refuse to accept a housing justice that begins and ends with a more equitable distribution of stolen land.

Housing wealth and political outcomes: a multi-dimensional analysis at the local level in South Korea

AbstractThe current study explores the relationship between housing wealth and political outcomes at the regional level in South Korea, providing insights that extend beyond the scope of previous research, which has primarily concentrated on individual or macro levels. It focuses specifically on district-level dynamics within the unique context of South Korea to uncover the underlying mechanisms of housing politics. The findings indicate a clear trend: as the average price of apartments – a key indicator of housing wealth – rises in a district, there is an increased tendency for residents to support candidates from the conservative party. Furthermore, the data-driven analysis highlights the significance of housing wealth amidst various regional characteristic variables, particularly in its capacity to distinguish the target regions. By employing comprehensive data and a multi-dimensional analytical approach, this study unravels the intricate relationship between housing wealth and political outcomes within a regional context. In doing so, it greatly enhances our understanding of the impact of housing wealth on political outcomes, bridging the gap between individual behaviours and national trends, and underscoring the pivotal role of housing wealth in shaping regional political dynamics.

Handbook, Standard, Room: The Prescription of Residential Room Types in Sweden Between 1942 and 2023

Norms and handbooks have played a key role in the design of residential rooms in Sweden since the 1940s. Ever since, changes in housing policies have led to varying definitions and regulations of residential rooms, allowing their existence, defining their configuration, and framing their performance. And yet, none of these rooms has been built; they are prescribed room types that belong in the pages of handbooks that validate the framework in which housing design can operate. What are these prescribed room types? What do they look like? Who and what do they include? Have they changed over time? In response to these questions, this article follows the evolution of a set of residential room types in the design handbooks that have accompanied housing policy bills in Sweden from 1942 to 2023. These manuals are not the law itself but operate as an interface for professionals and designers by reflecting the practical consequences of the norm. Diagrams, dimensions, texts, and references to housing literature vary from handbook to handbook to define the specific traits of each type of room. By studying these traits in relation to key moments of Swedish housing politics, the article reveals the role that norms and standards have played in the establishment of the regulatory regime in which housing design in Sweden operates today.

Urban research in film using walking tours and psychogeographic approaches

This article investigates urban change, making films from research approaches which use ethnographic walking interviews, public walking tours and psychogeographic techniques. The case study focuses on Newport, South Wales, UK. Using this example, I explore the longer-term impacts of the (mostly) state-led reconfiguration of British towns and cities from the late-1950s to the mid-1970s. Contemporary film for this period sets the context and links to Guy Debord’s concept of psychogeography, psychogeography in film, and associated walking techniques. This article builds a methodology from these principles, where one-to-one participant-led walking interviews – both outdoor and using online maps – reacquaint people over aged 55 with earlier periods of their biographies. These approaches reveal deeply-held memories and articulate feelings relevant to the present and future. This article develops and analyses practice, offering ways to film walking tours to sensitivity present and explore place narratives over time: firstly, working with community activists to reveal the politics of local housing; and secondly, a commission with a theatre company where three artists follow a specific walking route which explores urban change and rights to the city. As towns and cities face challenges these approaches offer visual methods to engage the public in place making.

Transition to broader-based politics: The role of suffrage extension in early 20th century Japan

The period of modern industrialisation is commonly characterised by gradual democratisation through enfranchisement and intra-elite competition between traditional landlords and emerging capitalists. This raises the question of whether the redistribution of de jure political power via suffrage expansion can catalyse the transition of intra-elite power structures, as reflected in political representation. This study explores the impact of suffrage extension, induced by the wartime tax increase in Japan during the mid-1900s, on the occupational composition of the House of Representatives. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, I demonstrate that the expansion of the electorate led to a significant decline in the seat shares of agricultural landlords, who initially constituted the dominant occupational group in the House. In consideration of the historical context, the overall findings suggest that suffrage extension likely played a crucial role in diversifying House politics away from a landlord-centred system.

Planning deregulation as solution to the housing crisis: The affordability, amenity and adequacy of Permitted Development in London

Since 2013, Permitted Development Rights (PDR) in England have allowed commercial-to-residential conversions in locations once deemed suitable only for non-residential land-use. This deregulation of planning control has been justified as a way of encouraging more home-building in areas experiencing ‘housing crisis’, but its overall consequences remain unclear. This paper hence compiles quantitative evidence on a city-wide scale on the price, size, build and location of these conversions in London 2013–2021. It finds that homes produced through this route are generally smaller than the London average and are over-concentrated in neighbourhoods with fewer accessible green spaces and higher-than-average levels of air pollution. Here, larger conversion schemes (of more than 10 units) appear particularly problematic, potentially subjecting residents to forms of ‘slow violence’ that could have long-term consequences for their physical and mental health. The paper also finds that, on average, PDR conversions are marginally more affordable than other new developments in the capital, but are also more expensive per square metre, suggesting deregulation is allowing developers to ‘extract’ maximum value from these schemes rather than providing affordable homes per se. The implications of this are discussed in relation to the politics of housing in London and the wider forms of planning deregulation allowing developers to accrue increased profits from housing in an era of intense financialisation.

The persuasive mask of postfeminism: Claire’s hegemony and sexual politics in House of Cards

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a particular discussion in the sphere of TV series that revolves around women’s empowerment: the recurring confusion between feminist efforts to improve the condition of women and minorities as a structural group and postfeminist rhetoric of individual struggle and hard work, the latter being frequently used by politicians. Using the six seasons of the House of Cards (HoC) TV series as a case study, I argue that Claire Underwood exercises a hybrid femininity frequently portrayed as inclusive in discourse but ultimately seeks to increase her political influence by leveraging social issues such as abortion and sexual harassment. In light of the Roe v. Wade overturned and the use of postfeminist rhetoric by politicians such as Hillary Clinton, hybrid forms of femininity both contribute to and reinforce systems of inequality. These forms highlight the systemic differences between ordinary women and those who have reached the top of the political hierarchy.

Moral economies of housing in post-boom Croatia: Swiss franc loans crisis and politics of housing financialization

This paper traces the Croatian Swiss franc loans crisis and debtors’ movement in the context of the wider politics of housing finance after the 2000s credit and housing boom. The movement mainly contested Swiss franc loans through litigation and demands for regulation of predatory lending practices. This selective and institutional articulation of the issue reflected the urban middle-class background of the movement’s constituency and its ambivalent position of having stakes in the financialized housing regime while resisting some of its consequences. Political and financial elites supported a relaunch of a more regulated version of finance-led, state-subsidized housing provision. The structural conditions resulting from the postsocialist housing privatization and the hegemonic ideology of homeownership have been instrumental in preserving the established model. Even then, the CHF loans experience contributed to a slow and gentle shift in the politics of housing towards a possibility of, and calls for, a less ownership-dominated and financialized model.

Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique by David Morton, and: The Politics of Housing in (Post-)Colonial Africa ed. by Kirsten Rüther et al. (review)

Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique by David Morton, and: The Politics of Housing in (Post-)Colonial Africa ed. by Kirsten Rüther et al. (review)

Balancing Accumulation and Affordability: How Dutch Housing Politics Moved from Private-Rental Liberalization to Regulation

ABSTRACT This paper answers the question why the Dutch state has gone from vigorously stimulating private-rental growth and liberalization to actively restricting the tenure. Answering this question is important in understanding an emergent wave of more restrictive, or even “post-neoliberal” housing policies across countries. This paper presents an analysis of the changing private-rental politics in the period following the Great Financial Crisis, combined with a quantitative study of renters’ housing outcomes. The central argument is that policies promoting private-rental growth and liberalization and the subsequent turn restrictive policies are both outcomes of the state seeking to balance the property-led accumulation with middle-class residential demands. Supportive policies were the result of a presumed alignment of the interests of capital, the state and the middle classes, but ongoing liberalization has undermined middle-class housing affordability – revealing a key tension between capital and middle-class interests. This tension triggered new, more restrictive policies.

Experiencing resonance: everyday life in modernist blocks of flats in Oslo, Norway

Based on an interdisciplinary approach to architectural history, drawing upon sound studies and anthropology, this article offers a case study of contemporary experiences of resonance by residents living in modernist blocks of flats in Oslo built in 1964. Drawing upon ethnography and archival research, I ask how these sonic experiences affect people's relationships, both with other neighbours and the building itself. Moving from the outside and into the building, following architectural historian Katie Lloyd Thomas' theoretical approach to materials and how these materials come into being, I discuss the way resonance creates a series of tensions, affecting the way individuals relate to their surroundings, both affecting the way we see our built environment and social relations. Asking what it means to live in a modernist block of flats, I frame the residents' own stories of resonance within a larger context of changing neoliberal housing reforms in Norway from the 1980s until today. I argue that the experience of resonance creates new spatial configurations and also can stand as a critique of neo-liberal housing politics, forming connections that are both social and material.

Rents, refugees, and the populist radical right

The recent successes of populist radical right (PRR) parties have caused major upheavals across European political landscapes. Yet, the roots of their rising popularity continue to be widely debated. We contribute to these debates by advancing a thus far underexplored argument of rising rent burden as key to understanding contemporary PRR vote and nativist attitudes. Rising rents lie at the heart of growing concerns related to housing (un)affordability and (over)burden across Western democracies, directly affecting the economic and social well-being of substantial numbers of citizens. PRR parties, we argue, stand to gain from politicizing such concerns in distinct economic and nativist terms, especially amidst challenges like the European refugee crisis, which provoked an urgent need to house unprecedented inflows of refugees. Drawing on individual-level panel data from Germany, we uncover a strong relationship between rising rents, PRR vote, and hostile attitudes toward refugees. In calling attention to rising rents, our study adds important insights into scholarship on the politics of housing markets not only from the perspective of home ownership and housing assets, but also rents. In so doing, we also refine understandings of the conditions under which economic factors shape PRR support

Mind the housing inclusion gap: The voice of people with disabilities in German housing politics

AbstractAccessible housing is essential for disabled and elderly people with physical restraints to live independently. In reality, however, there is a considerable lack of accessible housing in Germany. While investigating the reasons for this insufficient supply, this article discusses the underlying policy mix and scrutinizes German accessible housing politics. Based on 50 semi‐structured interviews in the two states Saxony‐Anhalt and Hesse, it identifies the weak political influence of disability lobbyists as the primary reason. Lacking structural, organizational, and institutional power, they do not get access to decision‐makers in housing politics but are labeled as social policy actors. On the other hand, housing and building industries have considerable resources to push their housing policy agenda. Nevertheless, the empirical findings clearly show the challenging endeavor of integrating social and building policies in accessible housing while contributing to the overarching understanding of politics in minor policy fields.

Beyond efficiency in low-income housing provision: Everyday negotiations of nonprofit staff and the limits to caring through marketized housing in Buffalo, New York

This paper analyzes how conflicting understandings of housing – housing as a commodity, a financial asset, a human right, and/or a form of service provision – coalesce in and are negotiated by nonprofit organizations that oversee low-income housing in Buffalo, New York. Critically analyzing nonprofit organizations as sites where discourses about housing come into conflict, I argue that the work of nonprofit staff materializes into the conditions of the contemporary system of housing provision and these organizations are important sites of everyday resistance to the marketization of low-income housing in the US. Through an institutional ethnography, I track how nonprofit workers fill the gaps in the private housing market in meeting the housing needs of low-income households. I also show how the marketization of low-income housing constrains nonprofit workers’ ability to enact a politics of housing as a right or a form of care. I look to the literature of feminist care ethics to argue that a broader, communal, and embodied understanding of housing provision could provide an alternative, non-marketized basis for a more just housing system – but one that must necessarily exceed the contemporary housing system.

Social housing and feminist commoning in urban Vietnam

This article examines challenges to the privatization of public goods in social housing in urban Vietnam, where versatile modes of commoning have been essential to sustaining life and livelihoods. Informed by theories of feminist commoning, it highlights the collective efforts of elderly women, in particular, to appropriate state property and maintain the commons to support everyday social and economic activity in ambiguous spaces undergoing urban change. Female-led strategies of subsistence and sociality have been directed toward the maintenance of common resources across shifts in political economy from state to market socialisms. Rather than organize outside formal institutions only, collective action manifested through a politics of housing that made claims to public goods in ways that pushed the state to accept existing commons and commoning practices.

Continuity and change: wartime housing politics in Ukraine

The article analyses the war-imbued housing crisis in Ukraine and emergency response to it in the first four months of the full scale Russian invasion as embedded in the wider context of Ukrainian housing politics. As in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989/91, the Ukrainian housing sphere has been shaped by mass giveaway privatisation, which created a super homeownership regime that is characterised by high expectations towards the state in the support of homeownership. Despite the mass destruction of the war and scale of the displacement, housing politics continues to be shaped by institutional inertia and attempts to resolve the current housing crisis with existing instruments and the support of homeownership. Such an ad-hoc policy approach leaves displaced households without coherent assistance in finding shelter. Only rather sporadic and insufficient options provided by communities at local level and international aid organisations are available. However, while lacking institutional and policy adjustment in the first months of war, the Ukrainian housing sector is changing. Growing importance of renting in the tenure structure and the pressing need to shelter those who lost access to homeownership as a result of war call for the development of a new, more comprehensive, housing strategy.

From the streets to the statehouse: how tenant movements affect housing policy in Los Angeles and Berlin

How can tenants affect housing policy? This paper compares rental housing politics in Los Angeles (USA) and Berlin (Germany) between 2008-2020 by examining how political processes influenced policy. It serves as a case of the emergence, escalation, and impact of tenant power. Tenant movement organizations employed five mechanisms to affect policymaking: (1) making demands, (2) forming coalitions, (3) promoting referendums, (4) engaging government officials in dialogue, and (5) transferring agents to government. The paper draws on multiple data sources, including interviews and participant observation over ten years. The cities witnessed policy episodes with four parallel characteristics: (1) locally progressive and regionally moderate, (2) shifting from defensive to offensive, (3) shifting from particular to universal, and (4) signs of a breakthrough beyond neoliberal housing policymaking. The findings suggest that the rise of tenant movements and their allies help drive policy change via multiple channels, exhibiting both similarities and differences across cities, especially in terms of money power and people power.

Caring Housing Futures: A Radical Care Framework for Understanding Rent Control Politics in Seattle, USA

AbstractHegemonic responses to housing crises overwhelmingly rely on liberal economic logics, which preclude understandings of housing inequalities as produced by intersecting structures of racial capitalism and settler colonialism. This creates housing futures that replicate housing injustice, through the reproduction of housing crises that uphold racial capitalism, the settler state, and white property ownership. To address this gap, I develop a radical care framework for analysing responses to housing crises as an approach that emphasises relationality, challenges the commodification of housing, and renders different housing futures possible. Radical care is a collective response to immediate crises and precarious futures. I apply this framework to rent control debates in Seattle, USA, which highlight the complex intersections between care and housing politics in responses to housing crises. I argue that analysing housing politics through a radical care framework helps us to account for more expansive sociopolitical imaginaries and actions that point to housing futures beyond the limits of what is deemed possible in a colonial, racial capitalist housing system.

The domestic sources of macroprudential policy divergence: financial regulation and the politics of housing in Germany and the UK

The domestic sources of macroprudential policy divergence: financial regulation and the politics of housing in Germany and the UK