Housing Wealth and Welfare

Both growth and unevenness in the distribution of housing wealth have become characteristic of advanced societies in recent decades. Housing Wealth and Welfare examines, in various contexts, how housing property ownership has become central both to household wellbeing and to the reshaping of social, economic and political relations.

Expert contributors analyse the critical interactions between housing and wealth that lie at the heart of contemporary forms of capitalism, especially its global, neoliberal incarnation. Comparing and contrasting case studies from across the European continent, this book illustrates how these interactions are reshaping the function of housing as a welfare object, including how the commodification and financialisation of housing in the twenty-first-century has transformed its role and amplified distributional outcomes.

Practical and engaging, Housing Wealth and Welfare will be of interest to researchers and students of housing studies, social policy, sociology, social geography and political science. It will also appeal to policy makers and practitioners with both local and international perspectives.