Although academic definitions of ‘corporatism’ differ, the concept is generally about organisational influence on state politics. Around 1980, Sweden was regarded as the archetype of welfare-state corporatism, but around the turn of the millennium the broad representation of organised interests in state politics was largely abolished. However, in the housing sector, strong interest organisations have continued to play a dominant and institutionalised role. Rents are negotiated collectively between organisations of estate owners and tenants, and these organisations also have strong influence on rental legislation and on housing policy more generally. We argue that this system should be seen as corporatist and to that end suggest a somewhat modified version of Philippe Schmitter’s well-established definition of corporatism. We claim that our ‘view from housing’ may contribute to the increased relevance of corporatism theory also in studies of other welfare sectors where market distribution is increasingly important.

This article aims to theorise the housing governance of vulnerable debtor populations from a relational perspective, developing the affective attachment concept. While the emotionality of housing has been studied in housing research, the relational understanding of affects/emotions offers a fruitful perspective for understanding the interface of power (re)production between subjects and structures. The argument is supported by a literature review and excerpts from a qualitative analysis of 30 interviews with overindebted people and 20 institutional actors which demonstrate the relevance of emotions in attachment to the precarious housing market. Linking the relevance of affective attachment with moral discourses, the article shows the potential to better understand how the (self)control and (self)discipline–(self)governance–of vulnerable people could be performed by morally modulated affects and emotions.

For decades, the analysis of housing policies in Portugal has focused on its distinct trajectory compared to those of other countries in western and northern Europe. However, the rise of the housing affordability crisis and the civic, media and political prominence that the housing issue has acquired in recent years have highlighted important similarities (despite some key specifics) with the dynamics that have been occurring internationally. This article discusses Portuguese political reactions to the affordability crisis. It presents a critical discussion of the ambitious multi-measure policy package ‘Mais Habitação’ (More Housing), including its content, the political conditions of its introduction, and its public reception - in the light of the recent international debates on the paths, possibilities, and obstacles to the post-neoliberalisation of housing policies.

The research aims to shed light on the case of a medium-sized town in the northeast part of Italy, where a semi-central neighbourhood, encompassing a triangle of streets and hundreds of apartments, has recently acquired the reputation of being an ‘urban social problem’, and is described by the local media as a ‘drug-dealing suburb’. Specifically, since 2021, most of the state- and company-owned buildings have been completely bricked up, families evicted, and apartments and gardens left in a state of complete abandonment, without giving residents any explanation, and without a plan for the future, except demolition. Using ethnographic and qualitative methodologies, this study seeks to investigate the reasons why such negative narratives have quickly become established in common discourse and are then immediately amplified by the media until they remain the only description of the neighbourhood, and to examine how residents have strived and worked to restore the centrality of their ‘sense of place’. In the conclusions, an attempt will be made to sketch out an answer to the classic question of whether a turnaround can be more easily brought about by large urban renewal plans, or whether community involvement in a network of ‘small plans’ might be more effective.

The world’s most unequal country suffers from various housing crises, especially when it comes to excessive reliance upon a private sector prone to market failures, especially affordability. State housing finance strategy during the transition from apartheid to democracy relied upon augmentation of formal banking finance so as to promote home ownership. But as macro-economic conditions changed in the late 1980s, the resulting mass defaults on individual families’ home mortgage bonds led not only to foreclosures by a (white) state, but (black) working-class resistance organised by the country’s leading urban social movement, known as the ‘bond boycott.’ Even after democracy, a worsening housing backlog coincided with resurgence of household debt crises in the wake of the 2008 global financial meltdown. That generated a new housing finance strategy led by Mastercard and a local fintech firm (supported by the World Bank): collateralisation of welfare grants which in turn allowed debit orders for repayment of microfinance (typically used for minor home improvements). Again, social resistance played an important role, as the strategy caused even worse personal debt crises, and a welfare NGO’s successful fight to close Mastercard’s partner. But beyond periodic revolts of these sorts, a durable housing finance policy has remained elusive.

The stubborn decision of the Latvian government to join the eurozone at any cost put a great burden on Latvian households after the crisis of 2008. Nevertheless, no popular protest movement emerged to change the course of this decision. This study discusses why Latvians undertook individual strategies to cope with the forex loan crisis. Particularly, I look at the choice between formal debt relief procedures and emigration as alternative individual strategies for defaulted debtors. These programmes have not reversed the negative migration trends or significantly decreased the number of Latvian households in arrears. Debt discharge is mainly attainable for wealthy individuals who are able to mobilise their financial and kinship resources. Worse-off debtors cannot attain debt discharge or are stigmatised during the process. Alternatively, emigration has offered a way to cope with overindebtedness and keep up with mortgages and consumer loan payments for a much larger segment of the debtor population.

Editorial.

‘Housing regime’ is a term that is used relatively often in (macrosocial) research comparing housing policies and systems. However, there is no generally accepted definition of this term. In this paper I shall first scrutinise previous uses of the concept, starting with a discussion of the most famous regime concept – the welfare regime. The discussion paves the way for a redefinition of a ‘housing regime’: the set of fundamental principles according to which housing provision operates in some defined area (municipality, region, state) at a particular point in time. Such principles are thought to be embodied in the institutional arrangements that relate to housing provision, in the political interventions that address housing issues, and as in the discourses through which housing issues are customarily understood. This definition is compatible with the path-dependence approach that has been adopted here and with the aspects of reality that researchers want to capture using the ‘regime’ concept.

The title conveys all the elements of this article. The typologies of capitalist economies, the typologies of welfare regimes, and the typologies of rental and owner-occupied housing regimes should be synchronised and combined, not selectively, but systematically. Integration will have to determine the multiple levels to which these typologies can be applied and on which they can interact. Owing to the persistence of housing institutions and buildings, a long-term (historical) view is also suggested – at all levels of analysis.

This paper argues that financialisation exacerbates gender inequity in the United States. During the Recession, wealth-stripping activities targeted single female homeowners prompting severe asset depletion among single women, people of color, and those who depend on them. Rather than protecting them from risk, their home equity and bodies absorbed the failures of capitalism within their network. The paper draws on a thematic analysis of interviews with 21 single female homeowners who experienced mortgage default. Rather than focusing on risk incidence, I take their relational pathways as the object of inquiry demonstrating how activities of gendered care work act as conduits and amplifiers of financialised risk that extends the responsibility for unpaid social provision throughout the lifespan. The analysis demonstrates how their status as homeowners positioned them in between market failures and the consequences of austerity thereby restructuring the function of home equity.

About 12 per cent of households in Finland live in social rental housing. The Finnish system of social housing is now facing challenges. Finland has reached a situation where large numbers of social rental dwellings are free from regulation because the state housing loans have been paid off, while new production of such housing is unable to make up for this loss. Potentially this means a decrease in the social rental housing stock. Current housing policy discourse sees social housing more as a failed policy than a necessary welfare measure. Such developments can be related to a larger change in the Finnish housing regime. It has entered a phase of retrenchment, where the government withdraws from its previous commitment to housing provision in order to give more room to market forces. Retrenchment has led to the strengthening of one of the basic features of Finnish housing policy, its selectiveness.

This article examines the marked decline in Irish social housing’s traditional role as the main source of accommodation for low-income households. We argue that although this policy redirection has become clearly apparent in the context of the Global Financial Crisis; its roots are, in fact, much older. They lie, not in Ireland’s most recent fiscal crisis, but in the last one which occurred between the late 1970s and mid-1980s. Changes made to arrangements for funding social housing during this time effected a long-term contraction in the social housing’s contribution to total housing output which, in turn, precipitated growing reliance on housing allowance subsidised private rented housing to accommodate this group.  The post-GFC austerity merely accelerated this long-term trend rather than signalled a new policy direction.