You just have to read the title of their essay (Defending Housing – Our Homes, Their Profits) to find out where academics David Madden and Peter Marcuse stand. Fiercely opposed to the hyper-commodification of residential housing, they are trying to propose possible solutions to the “real estate crisis”, starting from an examination of the economic, political and social movements that have shaped it for over a century.
The use of quotation marks to talk about this phenomenon that is prevalent in most of the world’s metropolises (hello, Montreal!) is not insignificant. A crisis is temporary; however, housing-related difficulties have been observed for many decades, going back, for example, to the working-class neighborhoods born of the industrial revolutions.
For Marcuse and Madden, the Marxist prism is best suited to the analysis of the dissensions around housing, which they consider to be the result of a class struggle, with antagonistic and almost irreconcilable interests. On the one hand, residential is perceived as a fundamental right (in the ethical sense), shaping the social fabric; on the other, an exclusively economic approach where yield takes precedence. Basically, home v. real estate. “Commodification” will also be a leitmotif of the book, pointed out as one of the main drivers of social tensions around housing, while deregulation, privatization, gentrification, financialization and globalization throw oil on the fire.
The essayists also refute the proponents of rampant, self-regulated real estate construction, promising a drop in prices. “Reaching this threshold would, however, involve disrupting the current residential landscape. This would result in displacements of considerable magnitude” and “a sharp increase in residential segregation,” they predict. Only a change of model and a questioning of hyper-commodification could provide an answer to the “crisis.”
Read the text “Gentrification”, between paradoxes and questions”
Building ideas
The chapter devoted to the concept of “residential alienation” dissects one of the main knots at the heart of this struggle. Defined as a source of anxiety and insecurity, it exposes large sections of the population to sustained social violence, even its most extreme form, eviction. The essay—written in 2016 and translated into French this year, having greatly gained in relevance over the years—provides mainly examples from the United States. Yet one only has to skim through The Press to note that Quebec is more concerned than ever.
For the authors, “ontological security”, that is to say stability in the broad sense, must be claimed.
What about home ownership, touted as a miracle solution by some? It’s far from a panacea, say Madden and Marcuse, pointing to the potential strangulation of mortgage repayments (again, the recent surge in interest rates proves them right) and an illusory guarantee (they mention the foreclosures of residences in the wake of the crisis of subprimes).
So what solutions are there without having to raze the entire system to rebuild everything? Apart from the resistance movements observed particularly in New York (rent strikes, demonstrations and anti-eviction occupations, etc.), it is difficult to draw up a model without falling into utopia. But some initiatives can inspire, such as housing cooperatives; in Quebec, the rise of co-housing, such as Village Urbain in Lachine, constitutes a convincing example.
Read the text “Affordable cohousing: between bricks and social imbrication”
More broadly, academics are calling for a decommodification of housing, the development of social housing and new models, a refocusing on residents, or even a “globalization of housing movements”: tenants and precarious owners of all countries, unite!
And the state in all this? It remains at the centre of the chessboard. “Housing is political,” it is stated. However, the essay seeks to debunk certain myths, such as that of its supposed benevolence or interventionism. “In the United States, federal power has systematically served to reinforce the social hierarchy rather than to overthrow it,” we read. “The state is not a neutral entity”: talk to the current Quebec government about it.
Extract
“However, real estate companies cannot be held responsible for the current injustices in housing. As entities founded, within the legal framework established by the State, for the sole purpose of financial accumulation, large companies have by definition only one goal: the pursuit of profit regardless of the social consequences. A housing system dominated by such companies and other real estate owners obeying the same logic will always produce residential inequality and crisis. The solution to the housing problem, therefore, is not moralism, but the application of a different residential logic. Urging real estate companies engaged in the race for profit to act differently under the pretext of creating a more humane system is useless. Housing problems are not caused by greed or dishonesty, but by the structural logic of the system. Different, decommodified models of residential development must therefore be developed.”
Who are David Madden and Peter Marcuse?
David Madden is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. Peter Marcuse, who died in 2022, was professor emeritus of urban planning at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.
Defend housing
Ecosociety
200 pages