The politics of housing: policy reform

Especially in modern high-income countries, housing provision involves complex and interconnected systems in which numerous factors affect both demand and supply. Certain inherent features of housing as a product, as well as the increasingly fragmented and intellectually eroded state of housing policy governance, also contribute to making this a particularly challenging policy area when it comes to reform. Nevertheless, growing concerns around declining housing affordability in the post-Global Financial Crisis era have brought to the fore three distinct, albeit potentially somewhat overlapping, housing reform discourses. However, only one of these—the ‘land and finance’ narrative—is informed by a full recognition of the special qualities of housing and land as economic commodities. Some associated policy proposals may be compatible with neoliberal governance, but since others challenge fundamental beliefs on the sanctity of private property and neoliberal pre-conceptions on the proper role of government, this discourse pushes at the boundaries of what could be termed reform. While our review only goes to highlight inherent obstacles in realizing such change, we also discuss pre-conditions for necessary structural reform and highlight the argument that continuing inaction comes at a mounting cost.