Getting on top of rent madness? The struggle for decommodification and democratization of the german housing market in academic and activist spheres

Keywords: housing, gentrification, social justice, scholar-activism, financialization
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 50

Abstract

This contribution analyses forms of complicities between housing activism and research in the German debate during the last 20 years, that had been engaged in the decommodification and democratization of the housing sector (Schipper 2018). It highlights opportunities, challenges, and future perspectives in this relationship.
Firstly, I’ll analyze major housing and financial deregulation measurements and their perception, adaptation and (absent) contestation in the public, activist, and scientific discourse. The measurements have paved the way for the financialization of the housing market, so that in aftermath of the 2008 crisis, German real estate could become “everybody's darling” in the investment world. As a result, certain neighborhoods experience amongst the highest rent and real estate price growth rates in Europe.
Secondly, the contribution explores political and scholar-activist dynamics around the referendum on the dispossession of corporate landlords in Berlin, being the most popular recent campaign for the decommodification and democratization of housing in Germany. It reconstructs waves of politicization that spread from Berlin to other cities and identifies research questions that had come up in the context of the campaign.
Thirdly, by giving examples from my fieldwork in different German cities, I shall outline the character and potential of other progressive forms of housing regulation that had been developed/applied recently, but also the circumstances that limit the impact of current innovations in the filed of housing politics for improving the living conditions of marginalized urban populations (Schipper 2021).