Metropolitics

The House is Ours: How Moms 4 Housing Challenged the Private-Property Paradigm

Lauren Everett — 2020-10-06T05:00:00Z

In the midst of a global housing affordability crisis that has been heightened by the Covid‑19 pandemic, it is time to reconsider how the right to profit from property ownership is privileged in policy, funding, and ideology in the United States. Oakland-based Moms 4 Housing's bold direct action presented a concrete challenge to the status quo.
On November 18, 2019, in west Oakland, California, Dominique Walker and Sameerah Karim started moving their families into the vacant three-bedroom

- Essays / housing, affordable housing, community land trusts, property ownership, property, homeownership, private property, real estate, speculation, California, United States, Oakland

Black Homeownership Under Racial Capitalism: A Review of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit

Hilary Botein — 2019-12-10T06:00:00Z

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit examines the urban homeownership programs of the 1960s and 1970s, and shows how they exploited rather than enriched black homeowners and communities, and set the stage for the retreat from racial liberalism.
In Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real-Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explores black urban homeownership in the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on the public–private partnerships that facilitated

- Reviews / race, homeownership, property ownership, capitalism, United States, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Black women

Social housing in Africa: a model to be (re)invented?

Alexandra Biehler & Armelle Choplin & Marie Morelle & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-10-16T04:55:00Z

While the question of housing for working-class populations remains a recurrent issue in sub‑Saharan African cities, the “social-housing” policies implemented by states following independence, and under the influence of lenders, have almost always benefited the most well-off. Are the “participatory” alternatives now promoted by some NGOs enough to create a new model for social housing in Africa?
Strong demographic growth and urban sprawl, planning “failures”, areas of illegal occupation and

- Debates / homeownership, participation, housing, housing policy, urban policy, social housing, African cities, Africa, Global South, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Nouakchott, Yaoundé

Interrupting Inequality: Crisis and Opportunity in Low-Income Housing Policy

Susan Saegert — 2015-01-26T05:50:00Z

Inequality in the United States is deeply rooted in issues of property ownership, wealth, race and class. Lower-income and minority households in the United States are constantly challenged in their struggle for decent stable housing by unaffordability and insecurity, exacerbated by the twin foreclosure and financial crises and its aftermath. Community land trusts seem to offer an alternative that can interrupt the cycle of crisis for both households and communities.
Inequality, property and

- Debates / homeownership, financial crisis, housing, housing policy, inequalities, United States, land, New York, crisis, rental, foreclosure, housing crisis, community land trusts, rent, rental housing, affordable housing

The Age of the Renter

Tony Roshan Samara — 2015-01-05T05:50:00Z

Not all Americans own their home. In fact, more and more of them rent it. More and more of them also end up paying a disproportionate amount of their income for shelter. Despite a system largely biased in favor of homeowners and widespread predatory practice against tenants, Tony Roshan Samara sees recent renters' mobilizations as an encouraging sign for many poor families throughout the USA.
The recession of 2004–2009 ushered in an era of sustained, structural inequality that is

- Debates / homeownership, housing, United States, rent control, rental, housing crisis, right to the city, rent, rental housing

The “ordinary” Italian suburbs: exploring the apartment buildings of the middle classes

Thomas Pfirsch & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-12-11T06:00:00Z

Through the detailed histories of 23 apartment buildings and their inhabitants, a team of historians and architects show how Italy became a society of homeowners during the boom of the 1950s and '60s. This book sheds light for the first time on the history of this little-known aspect of the private housing sector that nevertheless concerns the majority of Italian households, and highlights the – often underestimated – role played by public policy in its development.
As the debates on urban

- Reviews / homeownership, housing, developers, Rome, housing estates, Italy, middle classes, Milan, Turin, self-segregation, owner-occupiership, co-ownership, condominium

Solving the housing crisis: opening up private housing to the social sector

2013-02-13T05:50:00Z

Jean-Pierre Lévy has devoted much of his work to the issue of poor housing conditions. Here, for Metropolitics, he discusses the causes of a crisis that, in his view, is essentially qualitative in nature, and proposes a solution to this crisis, whereby the social status of housing is defined according to who occupies it rather than where it is built.
What are the main differences between the way housing issues were addressed in the 1970s and the way they are addressed today?
Housing issues

- Interviews / homeownership, housing, housing policy, social housing, public policy, landlords, rental, rent, rental housing

Explaining the periurban right-wing vote: “social frustrations” of low-income households or the reshaping of the working classes?

Violaine Girard & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-06-13T11:36:19Z

There is a growing interest in voting patterns in periurban areas, which tend to lean to the right or even far right. However, the interpretation of these patterns is often unsatisfactory: Violaine Girard shows that they reflect not a “downgrading” or “relegation”, but rather the profound transformations that have, for several decades, affected the stable fractions of the working classes.
Although periurban areas have for a long time been almost absent from research and media coverage, they

- Essays / homeownership, working-class neighborhoods, periurban, housing estates, work, vote, suburbs, elections, electoral geography, Front national, far right wing

The difficulties of housing the Chinese “sandwich class”

Jie Chen & Bernard Vorms & translated by Oliver Waine — 2011-12-21T06:00:00Z

In China, young people from the middle classes are said to belong to a “sandwich class”: they do not have enough resources to buy a property, and yet there are not enough rental properties to accommodate them. In areas where pressure on the property market is particularly high, state benefits fail to compensate a lack of assets.
China has chosen to make home ownership for all an unqualified priority, as well as the basis of its social protection and welfare system. Since 1998, and in less

- Debates / homeownership, housing, China

Is rising home ownership bad for employment?

Jean Bosvieux & Bernard Coloos & translated by Oliver Waine — 2011-11-09T06:00:00Z

Homeowners everywhere are less mobile than tenants. However, does home ownership have a negative effect on employment? This hypothesis forms the basis of policy recommendations recently formulated by a number of bodies, despite the fact that it is far from proven – indeed, it would appear to be refuted by existing studies.
All studies into residential mobility – whether in France or other industrialised countries – show that, all other things being equal, owner-occupiers tend to move home

- Debates / homeownership, housing, residential mobility, mobility, employment