Housing Crisis

The housing crisis is a term used to describe a housing system characterised by extortionate rents with the only prospect of financial security realised through the huge debts associated with purchasing residential property. How did housing become financialised? What role does it play in capital accumulation today? Is this a normal condition of capitalism or are we right to understand it as a crisis? What chance do we have of transforming the system so housing re-takes its rightful place as a source of security and community?

Johnna Montgomerie is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at University of British Columbia. She joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the role of the housing system in the functioning of capitalism, the ways in which it constitutes crisis, and why the system is so hard to change.

Recommended reading:
1) Colin Crouch, 'Privatised Keynesianism: An Unacknowledged Policy Regime', The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 11(3) (2009)
2) Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings, The Asset Economy (Wiley, 2020)

Works referenced in this episode:
1) 'Austerity and the household: The politics of economic storytelling', British Politics, 11 (2016)
2) 'Round the Houses: Homeownership and Failures of Asset-Based Welfare in the United Kingdom', New Political Economy, 20 (2015)
3) Susan Strange on economic power
4) Martijn Konings on the bailout nation
5) Greta Krippner on small savers in the US
6) Jonathan Hopkins on anti-system politics