98 - (Re)Politicising Housing

This is our second episode in collaboration with the ‘Where is Urban Politics?’ hybrid seminar series hosted by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands between 2024-2026. This episode ponders urgent issues on (re)politicizing housing across Europe. The first speaker is Josh Ryan-Collins, who talks about the financialisation of housing, drivers, outcomes and options for reform from a United Kingdom perspective. Following his talk, Dirk Benzemer responses from his research perspective. Josh ponders on the current housing affordability and wealth inequality crisis. He argues that supply side reforms, which means increasing the amount of housing, will not be sufficient to ameliorate the housing crisis. Beyond this, he sees crucial responses needed in breaking the powerful feedback cycle between depth and wealth driven financial flows and house prices and reducing the potential for rent extraction from home ownership. Dirk Bezemer begins from the question ‘Roof or real estate?’ to go through counter arguments he has encountered in Dutch political and public debates to which he is connected for many years. We hope you enjoy the episode.