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Rentier Capitalism, Australian Style

The growth of private renting is a distinctive feature of 21st-century housing systems. In some countries, this has been driven by corporate landlords in the direction of rentier capitalism, escalating the affordability crisis. In Australia, these institutional landlords have less purchase. Theoretically, this could buy time to invent a more sustainable rental model; in practice, corporate capital may be establishing a different bridgehead for similar shifts in the housing economy.  To explore this, we track changes in the proportion of housing held by individual absentee proprietary owners. We find their share is growing, mainly through an increase in properties intermittently generating rental returns. This coincides with the expanding role of PropTech start-ups – intermediaries financializing the frontier of secondary property ownership. Australian housing may thus be less at the lagging edge of a shift to institutional ownership, and more at the cutting edge of a further round of ‘profits before people’.

16.6.2026 | Christopher Phelps, Gavin A. Wood, Susan J. Smith, Rachel Ong ViforJ | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 102-115 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.610

Housing Prices under Geopolitical Threats: Transmission Channels of Geopolitical Risk along the EU’s Eastern Border – The Case of Poland

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of different categories of geopolitical risk (GPR) on housing prices and identify its transmission channels in a border country of the European Union. The analysis focuses on Poland, which constitutes the EU’s eastern border, has the largest and most dynamic housing market in the region, and is directly adjacent to war-torn Ukraine. The study utilises a vector autoregression (VAR) model for diagnostic purposes and a multiple linear regression (MLR) model for identifying the types of geopolitical risk responsible for observed price responses. The VAR results confirmed the existence of an indirect channel (the immigration channel). In the MLR, the aggregate GPR is statistically insignificant, while selected risk categories have a varied impact on the short-term dynamics of housing prices.

15.6.2026 | Maria Czech | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 87-101 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.609

Generation Rent in the Netherlands: Why so many Dutch Young People Now Live in the Private Rental Sector

‘Generation Rent’ refers to the disproportionate presence of young people in the private rental sector due to declining access to homeownership, a phenomenon that first emerged in the liberal housing systems of the United Kingdom and the United States. This study examines whether the concept is also relevant in more government-steered housing systems, such as that of the Netherlands. Drawing on data from the large-scale Dutch housing needs surveys (WoON), we find that while the Dutch system long resisted tendencies associated with Generation Rent, the past 15 years of neoliberal policies have significantly altered this trajectory. The outcome is growing inequality between the young adults who achieve homeownership, often through intergenerational support, and those who remain in the rental sector. To mitigate this divide, we propose revitalising the rental sector and introducing tenure-neutral housing policies.

14.6.2026 | Joris Hoekstra, Marietta Haffner, Harry Boumeester | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 71-86 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.608

Home-Making under Revocable Housing: Appropriation and Futurity after the Nagorno-Karabakh Displacement in Yerevan

This article examines how internally displaced persons from the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh negotiate the distinction between house and home in Yerevan, Armenia, through a study that draws on 30 narrative interviews conducted in 2022 and 2023. The study explores participants'' movement across three dominant post-displacement housing setting: collective housing, co-residing with family, and rental housing. It examines how participants’ experiences are shaped by the distinct conditions of entry, legitimate use, and temporal security afforded by each setting, rather than treating these settings as mere “options” that differ only in comfort and quality. By bringing together phenomenological ideas of home and materialist ideas of housing, the research develops a conceptual model of home-making that is grounded in practice and shaped by the interrelationship between housing settings, appropriation, and futurity. The research demonstrates that ‘not feeling at home’ is a practice that participants undertake in response to revocability in housing settings, and that participants'' actions of cleaning, repairing, and organising a space and the establishing of routines are all done amidst considerations/expectations of disruption. The research identifies distinct temporalities in institutional, relational, and market settings and demonstrates how constraints on spatial appropriation generate non-investment in a sense of home, even in housing that is materially sufficient. The research concludes with a discussion of the implications for housing policy that is grounded in a realist understanding of how to enable home-making, and how this requires moving beyond merely providing housing towards focusing on how to reduce revocability and to enable legitimate forms of appropriation that are modest and inexpensive.

13.6.2026 | Harutyun Vermishyan, Milena Sarmakyan | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 58-70 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.607

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Housing: Applying Three Types of Knowledge

Transdisciplinarity has become an increasingly prominent concept in addressing today’s complex societal challenges and is often invoked as a buzzword in grant proposals. But how can a transdisciplinary approach to housing be implemented? This contribution presents a systematisation of our experiences in an EU-funded project, which could serve as a starting point for similar processes. Key to the use of such an approach is creating an understanding of societal challenges by bringing together insights from different disciplines and fields of knowledge in academia and practice. Our main conclusion was that preconditions are just as important as the design of the transdisciplinary process, and these preconditions include gaining an understanding of the needs and specificities of the stakeholders. Furthermore, a “three types of knowledge model” for organising knowledge exchange processes, adopted from the Swiss school of transdisciplinarity, enabled the redefinition of challenges and the identification of new perspectives and strategies for change in practice.

12.6.2026 | Marja Elsinga, Adriana Diaconu, Marietta Haffner, Carla Sentieri Omarrementeria | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 46-57 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.606

Local Housing Supply Convergence: A Case Study of Polish Municipalities

Much remains unknown about whether housing supply converges across regions over time. Therefore, this paper aims to outline the theoretical drivers and barriers of housing supply convergence and to perform an empirical analysis across all municipalities in Poland for 2009–2024. Housing supply was examined from the perspectives of the housing market (new housing for sale/rent) and urban dynamics (total housing stock). Using the Phillips-Sul approach, the study found that housing supply converges across the analysed areas. Specifically, supply from a housing market perspective is characterised by level convergence, meaning it tends towards a stable long-term value. Conversely, supply from the urban dynamics perspective follows a path of growth convergence, with the rates of change in housing supply gradually becoming similar across municipalities over time. These convergence patterns suggest moderate allocative efficiency of housing supply in Poland.

11.6.2026 | Mateusz Tomal | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 31-45 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.605

Canada’s National Housing Strategy: A WPR Analysis

In 2017, the Government of Canada launched the National Housing Strategy (NHS), marking a renewed federal role in housing after decades of limited engagement. Using Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) approach paired with a housing justice lens, this paper examines how the NHS and related consultation documents construct the problem of housing in Canada. Rather than evaluating the Strategy’s successes or failures, the analysis focuses on how housing inequality is represented, the assumptions underlying these representations, and the implications for the types of solutions considered. The paper identifies two key logics shaping problem representations: the obfuscation of systemic inequities and the legitimization of market-based solutions. This framing shapes which interventions are visible or feasible within the Strategy, highlighting how policy discourse can constrain transformative approaches to housing inequality while maintaining existing structures.

10.6.2026 | Katie MacDonald, Kenna McDowell | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 19-30 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.604

From Regulation to Negotiation: Adaptive Studentification in Ankara, Turkey

Studentification – the influx of university students into urban neighbourhoods – has significant socio-spatial and economic implications. While many studies analyse institutionally steered studentification shaped by universities, municipalities, or developers, studentification driven by everyday landlord–tenant negotiations in weakly regulated private rental markets receives far less scholarly attention. This article investigates such a pathway in a historically working-class neighbourhood in Ankara, Turkey, showing how bottom-up dynamics sustain coexistence yet generate new forms of precarity. Drawing on a resident survey and in-depth interviews with students, long-term residents, landlords, and business owners, the study demonstrates how student in-migration reshapes the local economy, community relations, and housing. The findings reveal rising rents, insecure tenancy, and displacement risks, alongside coexistence, neighbourhood vibrancy, and a student-driven leisure economy. In contrast to the planning- and PBSA-led models typical of the Global North (e.g. Boston, Edinburgh), studentification in Ankara unfolds through everyday landlord–tenant negotiations and peer networks rather than institutional planning. These dynamics advance the understanding of adaptive studentification, clarifying the mechanisms that maintain everyday order and the conditions that expose their limits in weakly regulated housing markets.

30.4.2026 | Samaneh Sohrabi Akkoç, Funda Yirmibesoglu | Volume: 13 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 1-18 | 10.13060/23362839.2026.13.1.603