Social Movement Struggles for 'Housing for All': Case Studies of Vienna, Berlin and Toronto

Abstract

This dissertation explores the paradoxical nature of the ‘housing question’—the social conditions of housing under capitalism—and how it can serve as a catalyst for social transformation. In 'The Housing Question', Friedrich Engels first outlined the central paradox—that housing as a commodity is produced to satisfy the need for shelter as well as a means to accumulate private wealth. This contradiction creates and reproduces social and economic inequalities, particularly in the form of a housing crisis. It has also led to state intervention and social activism to address market failures through the decommodification of housing—the provision of non-market housing.

The central argument of this dissertation is that the paradoxes embedded in the ‘housing question’ generate democratic struggles in the form of housing activism and social movements. Using interviews and secondary literature, I conduct a comparative historical analysis of case studies in Vienna, Berlin, and Toronto to investigate the historical and contemporary forms of state management of the housing crisis. Applying Gramsci’s concept of the ‘integral state’, I analyze the policy terrain of housing provisioning across the case studies as well as the political strategies of housing movements and activism to transform the state and capital by building popular administrative capacities while providing shelter as a social need.

The key finding is that the ‘housing question’ produces particular policy regimes in the form of commodified, decommodified, and partially decommodified systems of housing provision. Each typology of housing provisioning is defined by social struggles and the degree to which their political strategies advance five key features of decommodification: 1) democratic governance; 2) social ownership; 3) social financing; 4) social production; and 5) the provision of housing as a common good. This dissertation concludes with a synthesis of housing struggles and platforms in the form of a counterhegemonic program of ‘housing for all’. The findings of this dissertation will contribute to new theoretical formulations on the contradictions of housing provisioning under capitalism and the political terrain for social movements to democratize and decommodify social provisioning.