En defensa de la vivienda

by David Madden, Peter Marcuse, Violeta Arranz (Translator)

En todas las ciudades importantes del mundo hay una crisis de la vivienda. ¿Cómo ha sucedido esto y qué podemos hacer al respecto? Todas las personas necesitan y merecen un alojamiento digno, pero hoy nuestros hogares se están transformando en mercancía, haciendo que las desigualdades en la ciudad sean cada vez más agudas. El beneficio se ha vuelto más importante que la necesidad social. Los pobres se ven obligados a pagar más por una peor vivienda, y las comunidades se enfrentan a la violencia del desplazamiento y la gentrificación. Los beneficios de una vivienda digna solo están disponibles para aquellos que pueden pagarla. En defensa de la vivienda es la declaración definitiva del urbanista Peter Marcuse y el sociólogo David Madden sobre esta crisis. Juntos analizan las causas y las consecuencias del problema de la vivienda y detallan la necesidad de desarrollar alternativas progresistas. La crisis de la vivienda no puede ser resuelta con cambios de política menores, argumentan. En realidad, tiene profundas raíces políticas y económicas, y requiere, por tanto, una respuesta mucho más radical.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Urbanism, Urban Planning, Sociology, Economics, Architecture

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Cailin Pitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I didn’t really enjoy this book. It felt like most of the book was just long, drawn out leftist arguments for why inequality in housing was bad, and I agree that it is bad. However, I feel like there could have been more focus on actual solutions to addressing housing inequality.

The chapter on the housing struggle in New York City was really good. It was frustrating to read about the things the last three NYC mayors have done to ensure a growing disparity between the rich and poor of NYC

[A Ter · Rating 2 out of 5]

For some time I have been searching for a thoughtful, balanced, pragmatic critique of U.S. housing policies. Unfortunately, this was not it. While it makes a (small) handful of strong(ish) points, it overwhelmingly is filled with dated, blindly ideological, ivory-tower diatribe so disconnected from anything real or actionable. It is particularly loose with facts and numbers -- for instance, citing that the number of homeless in New York is higher than during the Great Depression, which may be true or not but the city's population has also grown so a metric that does not scale for population growth is inherently misleading. There are other instances of convenient laxity in data interpretation. The only saving grace (which made me give this book two stars rather than one) is a brief 2-page section around 138-140 where it goes through legitimate concerns about some of the major federal housing programs. I wish there were more of this and less of the ideological babble that dominates the rest of the book.

[Alicia Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best recent text on housing issues I've read in a while. Marcuse thoroughly explains the commodification, deregulation, and financialization of housing. There are plenty of stats to illustrate how the better-off are using real estate as an investment strategy, while the worse-off have seen housing prices go up as wages have stagnated or gone down (creating things like the NYC phenomenon of a near-empty luxury building located a block from an overcrowded, dilapidated building).

What sets Marcuse apart from other writers on this subject is that he does a great job of ripping apart popular fixes for this issue, like home ownership. (In a nutshell, homeownership links those who can least afford to lose money, especially with shrinking wages and precarious retirement savings, with those who use real estate solely as a commodity, thus exacerbating the problem.)

The book ends with a call for transformative demands to end the commodification of housing. I could easily write a lot more on this book, but I'd end up typing all day. Read it! It's really good!

[Harriet Provine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of housing issues and how bereft they are from mainstream political discussion. It doesn't entirely fall into the leftist trap of criticism without offer of solution, but it could do with a longer discussion of paths forward.

[Nacho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice exposition to several aspects of housing under capitalism, from the history of its commodification to the efforts made to make it a universal service. It draws on classics such as Engel's, which I personally appreciate. It also proposes more or less concrete measures going forward.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

not going to launch into an in-depth critical analysis, but I basically knew nothing going in, and this was informative and enlightening and the 'home, not real estate' idea is one I'll undoubtedly keep thinking about going forward

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a good basic survey of the housing crisis. One aim is to clarify the terms of the debate by leaning on radical theory. Another is to discuss the progress of housing activism and policy in New York City. I think it'd be a good text for an undergraduate urban economics course, as a supplement the standard graph-heavy stuff. There are a lot of good reminders in here. Like others in its genre, it's not going to be too convincing to more pro-market reformers and there's only so much it can add for left-wing readers. But it helped clarify some things for me.

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pretty disappointed. I didn't expect this to be a rehashing of the history of public housing struggles in New York because that has been addressed in many other texts. The meat of this book is in the conclusion where the authors list a series of "shoulds" for housing. Solid ideas that are pulled from other work and housing activism but I would have preferred some deeper analysis of the proposed strategies.

[David Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well intended but wavers between being historical context, academic journal entry, and only spends about 7 pages of the book proposing solutions. There’s good information here but it’s on the drier side for a newcomer to this thought and not solutions based enough for a practitioner.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good book but it could have been 60 pages instead of 260

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For the oppressed, housing is always in crisis. The reappearance of the term “housing crisis” in headlines represents the experience of middle-class homeowners and investors, who faced unexpected residential instability following the 2008 implosion…In the United States, the discourse of housing crisis is often used to condemn state “interference” in housing markets. In the UK, the crisis frame is invoked in support of granting new legal powers to developers in order to override local planning guidelines.”

It’s a growing global problem from New York to New Zealand (the long way), a select group of millionaire/billionaires building new or buying up existing property in prime locations, artificially driving up prices and forcing out most people, so what we get is yet another situation where basic human needs are being commodified and used to squeeze yet more profits.

Many of the factors which have contributed to the global housing crisis are addressed here, from widespread deregulation to NINA (No Income No Assets) and NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) loans which end in predictable results. You have situations where wealthy developers like One57 received more than $65 million in public subsidies and tax breaks in order to make even more money. Of course it was such ludicrous laws which allowed clowns like the US president to exploit and profit from in New York. And of course such behaviour is not just confined to the States, “In one development in South London, more than 40 ex-public housing units are owned by the son of the government minister who presided over the privatisation of public housing in the 1980s.”

“Around the world, those seeking to turn houses into liquid assets are creating problems for those who merely want to live in them.” They go onto confirm that, “More homes owned by billionaires contribute little to the communities in which they stand. But they still take up space, force up costs, and push others farther out.”

We see that during the 1800s in NYC, the wealthy elite reacted with panic to the threat of social and economic instability from health problems of the poor like smallpox, dysentery and TB. Reform as ever grew out of self-interest, in particular the fear of illness associated with poverty and of course to prevent any potential uprisings was the motivation rather than the plight of their fellow man.

Madden and Marcuse also talk about some of the movements against gentrification and/or rent hikes over the years. New York’s Anti-Rent Movement which lasted from 1839 to 1859, involving 300,000 tenants and 2,000,000 acres of land to places like Glasgow’s Red Clydeside, in 1915, which saw acute housing shortages leading to spiralling rents, overcrowding and dilapidation. By the end of the year 20,000 households were on strike. After some minor street battles, fearing an outright insurrection, the state responded with eviction freezes and rent controls.

The only problem with this book is in the layout. It should really be a lot simpler. It is either in the book or it’s not, this maddening halfway habit of littering page after page with distracting footnotes or references, especially when they routinely take up nearly half a page or in some cases take up more space than the main text, then it becomes just ridiculous and it can makes for a messy reading experience. It seems that this bizarre ploy has been used here in order to pad out the pages and as a result, the layout reeks of amateurism.

This is a real shame as this is an interesting read and the authors clearly have many valid and worthwhile points to make. This book consists of a fascinating Venn diagram of sorts covering equal parts sociology, politics and history. In spite of the ill thought approach with the references and notes plaguing almost every page, this is a highly accessible, well researched and really enjoyable piece of work.

[Nickatb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book on the subject.

My criticism - and the reason that it’s four stars rather than five - is that the book seems to have been the starting point for a lot of other people’s wrong analyses. This suggests that the authors’ argument could have been clearer.

The most common explanation these days is that housing has *become* commodified. Housing has moved from being treated as homes to being exploited as assets. Some later writers even badly misuse the concepts of ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’, drawing on Madden & Marcuse’s arguments.

In fact the author’s case is less blunt than that. They understand, rightly, that housing is always, inherently, a commodity under capitalism. Their excellent account of ‘alienation’ makes that clear. And they identify a scale, ranging from the ‘hyper commodification’ of today to the ‘partial decommodification’ that we saw under the high point of social democracy. But this nuance often gets missed. In fact I missed it myself at the start of the book, and was frustrated and unimpressed by what I thought they were about to argue.

It’s a good and necessary read for anyone interested in understanding what’s going on with housing.

[yaya et ses amiEs achille et chlore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esti hen. T’as beau vouloir t'en détacher pis explorer d'autres choses, mais on en revient toujours à Marx. En même temps, ça tombe pas dans une marxologie assommante. C'est pas David Harvey mettons. Ni Lefebvre. On y apprend aussi que les mouvements pour le droit au logement sont depuis le début des temps des nids de communiste et de la gauche radicale.

Maintenant, je dois revoir La Estrategia del Caracol au plus sacrant. C'est pas mal In Defense of Housing dans toute sa dimension vécue et affective.

[Laureen Hollge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leftist account of housing crisis that lacked original insights into the mechanisms of the crisis nor did it offer any valuable measures that might actually improve the situation. It is a book for those who seek reassurance in their revolutionary rather than reformist outlook on urban questions.

[Ryan Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the root causes of our housing crisis and to begin to imagine real solutions.

[Benjamin Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tens of thousands of basements and rooms in Long Island and other suburbs have also been converted into illegal apartments."

Housing is always more than just housing."

"In all social settings, dwelling space structures power relations. It can be used to maintain the social order, or to support challenges to it."

"To say that housing is political is to say that struggles over dwelling space are inextricable from conflicts over power, resources, autonomy, and agency."

"We need to understand how dwelling space can be used in oppressive ways—and develop alternatives that unlock housing’s emancipatory potential."

"The potential for oppression stems from the distinctive aspects of housing as a commodity and the importance of its use."

"People resist in as many ways as they are oppressed."

"Across the globe, rent strikes have been tools in anticolonial struggles."

"Today, anti-eviction and anti-foreclosure activism takes a huge variety of forms."

"Take Back the Land is a Miami-based group that has blocked evictions, moved homeless families into foreclosed homes, and founded Umoja Village, a shantytown on empty land, as a way to draw attention to the connections between land, gentrification, and homelessness."

"The great housing estates of Red Vienna are among the best examples of an emancipatory residential environment. The city council, controlled by the Social Democrats from 1919, built tens of thousands of apartments as dense perimeter blocks of housing and communal amenities constructed around courtyards (Höfe)."

"Affordable housing is not a challenge to the ruling class. It can be provided in the name of social stability, as New Dealers like Langdon Post understood. The challenge today is to imagine a housing system that enables residents to confront power, social inequality, and structural violence in a more significant way."

"The contradictions of residential politics stem from the contradictions of contemporary society."

The fundamental questions about housing today are not about height restrictions or zoning changes, important as these questions can be. The core issues are what and whom housing is for, whom it oppresses, and whom it empowers."

"Housing policy is an ideological artifact, not a real category. It is an artificially clear picture of what the state actually does in myriad uncoordinated and at times contradictory ways."

"The specter of public violence terrified the city’s elites, and the fear of unrest played a key role in motivating the city’s response to housing matters."

"In fact, urban renewal was decisively shaped by the agendas of the real estate and finance industries from the beginning."

"The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), introduced in 1986, allocates tax credits to private developers.”

"While the budget for public housing was disappearing, funding for LIHTC steadily increased. The tax credit provides numerous advantages for its corporate beneficiaries."

"Under LIHTC, “corporate investors earn substantial profits … typically a 15 percent return on equity and they, in turn, become part of a powerful lobbying group.”25 After fifteen years, most dwellings created using the LIHTC are able to revert to market rents."

"Section 8 permits private interests to build, own, and manage housing intended for the poor, with no limits on profit whatsoever beyond those nominally imposed by a requirement that rents be based on an administratively determined level."

"But seen in historical context, inclusionary zoning appears, like many programs before it, to meet the needs of real estate more than the housing needs of residents."

"Definitions of income eligibility for these programs are based on percentages of a measurement called “area median income.” This figure is calculated for an entire metropolitan region, throwing detached suburban single-family homes into the average along with less expensive mass housing."

"The result is that many units of “affordable” housing are not affordable for large numbers of working-class or poor people."

"When so-called affordable housing programs are producing apartments that are priced at levels virtually identical to what developers would demand without the affordability requirement, it is clear that the term “affordable” is not descriptive so much as ideological."

"Promoters of inclusionary zoning and other affordable housing programs cast them as pragmatic solutions to the housing crisis. But in practice, despite the best intentions of some of its advocates, affordable housing is more of a strategy of the real estate machine than a relief from it."

"The below-market apartments are provided by the private market where and when it is profitable for it to do so. And they are distributed based on waiting lists or, more often, lotteries.”

"Acquiring such a unit is in essence a matter of luck. There is no sense in which affordable housing is in touch with the ideal of housing as a right of social citizenship."

"Protests against inclusionary housing in places like East Harlem or Greenpoint have sought to disrupt what one geographer calls the “general consensus in which real estate–led development is regarded not as a cause of gentrification but as its solution.”"

"Housing policy has consistently been designed to meet the economic needs of the real estate industry and the political needs of those running the state."

The story of a benevolent state doing its best to solve housing problems was used to justify more than a century of market-friendly liberalism."

"But since the 1980s, there has been a competing, conservative narrative about housing policy: the myth of the meddling state. It is in many ways the mirror image of the tale of the benevolent state. And it is just as inaccurate."

the state has been “interfering” with housing, it has been doing so by substantially lowering the costs of homeownership for people who can already afford it. The idea that what the state has done, it has done in the interests of the poor is standing history on its head."

"Government does not intervene in an autonomous private housing market. The state can more accurately be said to privilege some groups or classes over others."

"The question will always be how the state should act towards housing, not whether it should do so."

If the state is always an intruder, differences between policy alternatives become hard to decipher. And the role of the state in establishing and protecting the residential status quo becomes concealed."

"Getting rid of the meddling state does not mean “getting government out of housing.” It means using government to reproduce residential inequalities."

"In the United States, state power has consistently been used to reinforce rather than dismantle social hierarchy. But in different hands and under different circumstances, the state could be a vehicle for real housing alternatives. Both of the myths we have discussed obscure this point."

"State action can be used to democratize and redistribute housing, or it can function to preserve inequality and support private profitmaking. Rather than relying upon either the myth of the benevolent state or that of the meddling state, we need to see who actually sets government policy and whose interests are really served by it."

“But the 2015 rent freeze showed that in a city ruled by real estate, tenant power was alive and kicking.”

“The two most powerful actors, the real estate industry and the state, have never had absolute control over the housing system. They have always had to contend, one way or another, with the power of housing’s inhabitants, particularly when they take the form of organized housing movements."

""As a consequence, movements focused on housing can take a near-infinite number of forms. Throughout their history, they exhibit enormous variety in terms of tactics, strategies, goals, alliances, political calculations, compromises, and ideologies."

all forms of housing activism share a common purpose: the defense of the home and the personal lifeworld against economic pressures."

"Housing movements fight for use values against exchange values; for residential interests against the interests of landlords, banks, developers, and investors; for housing as home against the other economic and political ends for which housing has been appropriated."

“Housing struggles aimed at systemic change are inherently long-term."

"Housing organizations tend to morph and recombine. There have long been attempts to organize permanent coalitions, but none have proven durable."

"Housing movements have consistently faced questions about whom to target. Focus has shifted from direct confrontation between private forces in the housing field—mainly tenants versus landlords—to pressures for state action, and shifted back again."

“Housing activism in New York City has been discontinuous and diverse. But it has never disappeared."

"Until the nineteenth century, the housing question in New York was still essentially a question of production, related to rents paid as a share of crop yields rather than rents for the right to occupy housing."

"New York State’s Anti-Rent Movement lasted for some twenty years, from 1839 to 1859, and involved 300,000 tenants and 2,000,000 acres of land."

"In 1844, Irish tenants and housing reformers organized a group called the Tenant League in New York City, the first movement in the United States specifically focused on housing as a distinct issue. They denounced the complex “system of landlordism” that then ruled New York as “one of the most blighted curses that ever was inflicted on the human race.”"

"Early twentieth-century tenant politics was militant, organized, and effective. Waves of protest targeted both private landlords and the state, demanding rent rollbacks and regular maintenance from the former and tenant protections and public housing from the latter."

"The first documented direct action by organized tenants occurred in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1904."

"“Just as long as you continue to make laws whereby capitalists own everything that can be called the necessities of life, conditions will be unchanged.”"

"The very terms “rent strike” and “tenant’s union” attest to the connections to labor politics. Nonparticipating residents were derided as “scabs.”

"At one tenant rally on East Broadway, a mostly Yiddish-speaking crowd was exhorted to resist not only landlordism but also capitalism."

"This is the richest and best developed country in the world. Who made it so? The rich? No. The Police Commissioner? No. The poor made it so. The only cure for this rent evil and all these evils is socialism. We must work together, one for all, all for one. Down with the rents!"

"“Call it Bolshevism or anarchism, but I call it one of the tenets of real Americanism, when the people of the city get together to better their conditions.”"

"William Karlin, candidate for municipal judge and a former state assemblyman, declared in 1919, “The Socialist Party does not say you should pay less rent. It says you shouldn’t pay any rent … It is in the Socialist programme that the people shall take the homes and all the land and keep it.”

"postwar strikes demonstrated the potential of organized tenant power. But their conclusion also marked one of the housing movement’s periodic deaths. Offering protection to a small and dwindling number of households, landlords divided and co-opted the socialist-inspired tenant unions."

"At a 1932 picket line in what the New York Times described as “the Communist quarter of the Bronx,” groups of men and women sang the “Internationale.” Rioting seemed imminent. The Times observed, “The women were the most militant."

"Communists lacked legitimacy as well as overall strategy. “The Party had no systematic analysis of housing issues and no legislative solution to the housing crisis.”

Communist-led Unemployed Councils and communist residents of the Bronx co-ops provided significant support for many actions."

"Tenant leagues based in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing developments provided some of the most cohesive movement organizations in this period."

"But NYCHA residential activism was undermined by rules prohibiting the use of community facilities for “political” purposes and by the broader climate of anti-radical suspicion."

"Public housing in New York and other cities was suspected of being a nest of subversives."

"One of New York’s most enduring housing organizations, the Metropolitan Council on Housing, dates from this period.43 Founded in 1959, Met Council brought together tenants, labor organizers, neighborhood leaders, American Labor Party and Communist Party radicals, and professionals from middle- and working-class backgrounds."

"Met Council in the early 1960s organized campaigns to demand public housing, protest neighborhood destruction, and propose alternative plans for neighborhoods including the Upper West Side, Yorkville, Chelsea, and elsewhere. Met Council would quickly become “one of the most effective tenant groups in the nation,”

"But by the early 1960s, drawing strength from the civil rights movement, Harlem’s residents, and tenants in other communities of color, reenergized the housing movement."

"After the 1960s, residential abandonment became endemic. Public housing and rent control would never again expand."

"neoliberal transformation of the city initially spurred two trends in housing: gentrification and abandonment."

"Abandonment brought waves of destruction to New York neighborhoods. When landlords decided that maintaining their buildings was no longer profitable, many simply walked away from them. Some, seeking insurance payouts, also set their buildings on fire—with or without tenants inside."

"Groups like Los Sures in Williamsburg and Banana Kelly in Longwood helped tenants take direct control of abandoned properties and turn them into cooperatives. Some of these efforts began with successful rent strikes. Landlords simply quit, leaving well-organized tenants with months’ worth of withheld rent that they invested in fixing their buildings themselves."

"In some areas, the city proved to be just as careless as the worst rent gouger. In other parts of town, the city used its in rem properties, as well as tax subsidies like J-51 and 421-a, as the building blocks for state-led gentrification.”

"Some of the fiercest opposition on the Lower East Side came from squatters. Growing from its roots in Operation Move-In, by the 1980s squatting had become a stronger movement. Raids, evictions, power and water stoppages, and battles with the police were common."

"squatting proved to have serious limitations as a housing strategy"

"Some squatters voiced concerns that they might be “the real storm troopers of gentrification.” Others were essentially individuals acting alone, merely looking to secure housing for themselves with no connection to wider campaigns."

"And the squatters encountered violent opposition from the city and polarized public opinion regarding their ambiguous approach to property rights."

"Giuliani ordered the eviction of squats and launched a vindictive war against the homelessness and AIDS nonprofit group Housing Works and other housing organizations."

Opposition to the inequality of the Bloomberg years was one of the inspirations for Occupy Wall Street, which began their encampment in Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011."

"Opposition to the inequality of the Bloomberg years was one of the inspirations for Occupy Wall Street, which began their encampment in Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011."

"The movement’s largest housing protest took place a few months later, when a faction called Occupy Our Homes led a march and began a small occupation of foreclosed homes in Brooklyn."

"Activists associated with the Occupy movement led a grassroots response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, distributing aid to low-income households throughout the areas damaged by the storm. But since then, the housing branch of the Occupy movement has, like many residential movements that preceded it, has seemingly gone into remission."

The Rent Guidelines Board’s rent freeze vote is a case in point. The mayor’s appointees listened to tenant activists and voted not to increase rents on one-year leases. But the freeze did not extend to two-year leases as tenants had demanded, and little action was taken to help tenants on other important issues tied to the debate."

"A 2014 protest of two buildings on West 107th Street in Manhattan saw tenants chanting “No rent for rats!”—a phrase used by Jesse Gray decades earlier."

"today’s movements occur in a neoliberal context where political possibilities have been constricted."

"In neoliberal New York, the needs of those who use housing for living are frequently pushed aside. But the city’s tenants have been under attack before. It has never been long before they fought back."

"What links these disparate actors, actions, and goals is a commitment to one overall project: the defense of housing, which must necessarily take different forms as the nature of the city’s housing, politics, and economy changes."

“refusing to tell the powerful what they want to hear is different than not proposing a plan."

"Is it plausible to imagine universal and unconditional housing, in sociable and environmentally sustainable communities, as a matter of right rather than a commodified privilege?"

"housing for all is surprisingly common."

"New York State has its own distinctive constitutional approach to housing rights."

"“aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state.”"

"Callahan ended in a consent decree establishing a legally enforceable constitutional right to shelter."

"Merely declaring a universal right to housing is not the same as actually providing housing for all. Perhaps that is one reason why such rights can be so widely acclaimed."

“There is no single legal formula that, on its own, can bring an end to the ongoing housing crisis. As with all rights, everything depends on how it is interpreted, institutionalized, and enforced. The way forward is to acknowledge the limits of formal rights to housing under the current legal and political system while at the same time pressing for a sufficiently broad, activist conception of those rights."

"In fact, the pursuit of a right to housing is a strategic objective for activists in many cities."

"Crowds at demonstrations chant, “Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a right!” Banners proclaim, “HOUSING IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE.” Organizers in the US and abroad draw upon claims about human rights as a viable legal strategy against housing injustice. Opponents of gentrification often end up relying on some version of housing researcher Chester Hartman’s idea that there should be a “right to stay put.”"

"the activist conception of rights invoked by the phrase

"More than a simple legal claim, a real right to housing needs to take the form of an ongoing effort to democratize and decommodify housing, and to end the alienation that the existing housing system engenders."

"The contemporary world already possesses the technical capacity and material resources to solve the housing problem. The question is whether all who are badly served by the status quo can unite to create a truly humane system, where housing is not real estate but is, instead, home."

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been meaning to read this for forever, but I picked it up after coming across Matt Hern citing the last sentence of the following:

“Housing crisis is a predictable, consistent outcome of a basic characteristic of capitalist spatial development: housing is not produced and distributed for the purposes of dwelling for all; it is produced and distributed as a commodity to enrich the few. Housing crisis is not a result of the system breaking down but of the system working as it is intended.” (10)

Marcuse’s take is obviously correct, but “housing-is-a-human-right-and-fucking-shit-we-live-in-neoliberal-hell-and-we-must-decommodify-and-democratize-everything” isn’t a chain of thoughts I’ve let myself get lost in very often. Instead, I have a fuckton of HUD acronyms, tax policy terms, and capital stack components memorized and bouncing around my head 24/7 for work and research. But for what? So much faith and so much power vested in housing policy, in market solutions, in LIHTC, in IZ, in banks and their foundations, but, somehow, things have grown even worse since Marcuse wrote this book. All that to say that I’m sick of thinking about housing policy and am more than happy indulging myself in reading about housing from the perspective of critical Marxist planners.

This book was good. Lots of really incredible sources to check out in the footnotes. I enjoyed the references to Engels, the Black Panther Party, prominent reformers, and the entire survey of housing movements in New York. Lots of things were written here addressing (but not fully answering) questions I’ve had. Who to get mad at? What to do with the anger? What kinds of parties (nonprofits, foundations, philanthropists, well-meaning public servants) are genuinely for the tenants and willing to go to bat for tenants? The book reaffirmed what I know: the market isn’t coming to save us, neoliberal capitalism is not coming to save us, inclusionary zoning and market-rate developers forced to sprinkle some affordable units into their portfolios are not coming to save us, most well-meaning HUD programs are not going to save us, housing is a human right, unrestricted hyper commodification of all of our homes has ruined everything, I don’t ever want to be a landlord.

I don’t have that many complaints about this book, except that it was pretty ramble-y at points, and at times glossed over points that really should have been developed further. This isn’t a housing policy text or a historical project, so I’m mostly fine with this having read like a series of frustrated essays.

[Philemon - · Rating 4 out of 5]

Housing crises are nothing new. This very well-researched book covers numerous instances in the last 150 years. The sobering conclusion is that the cards are always stacked against those pressed by exorbitant rents and ultimately expelled from tight housing markets. Government tries to act concerned with its Housing Departments and Policies, but don't be fooled, the wealthy and well-connected always occupy the inside track. History teaches that to get action, tenants and dispossessed owners may ultimately need to organize, get loud, get big, perhaps even big and loud enough to threaten some real social upheaval (maybe via an expanded and even more aptly named Occupy movement?).

This book was published in 2016, which now seems long ago. The housing situation has gotten much worse since them, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. Commodification of homes, along with everything else, is swiftly advancing under a neocon power structure that seems only interested in boosting inequality.

Homes, the authors remind us, are not just tokens in a global monopoly game. They provide a level of security that allow us to be human. Law and government need to recognize their importance in sustaining a society worth living in. We can't just let hedge funds and billionaires soak up everything in sight, leaving half the world with grossly substandard living conditions or nowhere to live at all, can we?

Some day we will have to take justice seriously.

[Horia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would give it more like 3.5*

Pretty clear analysis, but would have loved to see more solid policy proposals. Subverting the current housing system requires actual steps that can be taken by governments at any level, and the more concrete the steps are the easier it is to pressure officials to adopt them.

The chapter on the history of housing policy in NYC was interesting, but some might want to skip it since it is very specific to NYC, and might not be of interest to someone that does not care about NYC.

Like plenty of left-wing analyses, gives you plenty of arguments against the current system, but lacks a positive argument for the alternative. But critique of the current system is done pretty well.

[Blaze-Pascal · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Marxist spin on Housing. An entire book on the housing question, and its pretty common sense stuff. A bit of Marxist theory at the beginning on alienation, enclosure, ontological security, a critique on the myths of housing of either a benevolent government, or a tampering government. And the final chapter has some solutions on the entire problem, even though they feel so far away, it makes sense. Reading this makes me hopeful that some people get the importance of housing, but the reality is we're very far away from any kind of housing justice, its simply not even on the table despite the rent strikes and other forms of residential protests took place.

[Addy · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is really, really good stuff! really fascinating critiques of progressive housing policy and discussions of “non-reformist reform.” Makes an urgent case for broader thinking about new solutions + models, and makes great points about elite discourse on housing that I have certainly taken the bait on in the past. Conceptually rich and nuanced. Like most thinkers on housing, the authors risk leaving out new/future residents in their thought, when they ought to be at front of mind. Privileging localism has costs which tend to be ignored because of the exigencies of the housing crisis.

[Matt Kohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the material covered in the book was interesting, gave me some new frameworks in which to think about housing issues and how social needs are trapped in a cycle of commodification. I wish there was more covered and more depth / examples for the arguments, and also am cynical about NYC's likelihood to part from the profits to be earned by reaming poor housing conditions and ridiculous rents

[Jacob Andrewartha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great contemporary primer of a anti-capitalist analysis on the housing crisis, putting different social movements and periods of resistance in context, whilst providing a guide to action in terms of how we struggle around housing today, going to what kind of demands we should be putting forward in the social struggles around housing and public space.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was very lit

[Lauren Gnat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for school, so it's hard to give a rating. The book describes the political and economic factors that underlie the housing market and sheds light on the history and social conditions that have led to a housing market prioritizing profit over the social and universal need for housing. Check this book out if you are interested in learning more about housing justice and why our housing system is set up to be inequitable.

[Nia Paz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
qualms but overall accessible language and nice flow
repetitive at times ++ why are we talking about global housing issues and only focusing on Uk and Us

[Gijs]

óf je bent al bekend met dit onderwerp en dan biedt dit boek vrij weinig nieuws, óf het is nieuw voor je en dan is het, vermoed ik, vrij lastig te volgen

[Brodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fucking incredible book. wish i'd read it earlier. articulated so many things i've been thinking about in a clear and precise way. should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in housing

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up when I was a grant writer for a shelter, and it enabled me to be a more accurate and analytical rhetor when authoring documentation about housing instability. Offering rhetoric about alienation and systematic abuse helped me contextualize the language I was using in my own documentation; to recognize deliberate processes of commodification and exploitation. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a primer on this history of housing policy through a socio-political lens, rather than economic one.

More in-depth, spoiler-y thoughts below:

Overall, Marcuse and Madden offer thorough exposition to several aspects of housing under globalized capitalism; it's commodification, deregulation, and financialization. They make a strong ethical argument for establishing housing as a universal service -- arguing that housing is increasingly seen in its exchange value, rather than as a utilitarian human right which provides the dignity of clean and safe shelter.

Personally, I took a lot from the framing of a manufactured crisis -- framing economic disparity and untenable living conditions as not a *flaw* of the system but a *design* of it. The housing market is deliberately inoperative for poorer communities:
“The idea of ‘crisis’ implies that inadequate or unaffordable housing is abnormal, a temporary departure from a well-functioning standard. But for working-class and poor communities, housing crisis is the norm. Insufficient housing has been the mark of dominated groups throughout history.” (9)

What I found particularly interesting in this text was Marcuse's exploration of "residential alienation," a subject he previously expounded upon at length in his 1975 essay "Residential Alienation, Home Ownership and the Limits of Shelter Policy." In that essay, Marcuse defines residential alienation as a "condition of estrangement between a person and his/her dwelling" (183). Residential alienation not only defines the othering of an individual from their own shelter, but also describes how that experience manifests on an individual level; how that insecurity and mobile lifestyle results in acute fear and anxiety. The emotional stress of estrangement takes a physical toll on the oppressed, often resulting in their worsening physical and mental health. This speaks to how insidious and omnipresent the effects are of insecure or unsafe housing; how it pervades every facet of one's life and undermines their sense of security completely. Whenever American legislators pass policies that attempts to turn renters into homeowners, the unhoused population continues to climb in urban areas because the housing system remains commodified. The authors suggest that the way to stabilize the system and refute residential alienation is to instead focus on enabling secure housing regardless of ownership.

Madden and Marcuse introduce and set aside residential alienation in chapter two. From there, they elaborate on the history of the housing crisis, and further explain how "crisis" is a misnomer given it is functioning as designed. I would have liked to see the authors dig deeper into residential alienation, as Marcuse had done in his essay.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcuse provides an engaging critique of the modern housing system, particularly highlighting what he views as the origins of our current housing crisis. I found his assertion that housing has morphed from a historically-considered personal/familial right to an overly exploited commodity under the American (and European) capitalist regime of the past 300 years to be particularly interesting. He also does an excellent job explicating on the history of various housing-related movements in New York City. At some points I wished he would go into a bit more detail in terms of providing additional sources to support his historical critique, but this doesn't detract that much from his argument.

Overall it's a pretty engrossing and incredibly relevant book. Would definitely recommend to anyone interested in the Housing issue.