Against Landlords: How to solve the housing crisis

This book presentation is part of the SOAS Economics Seminar Series - Autumn Term 2024.

The economic analysis of housing markets that dominated 20th century thinking, despite the successful policies of that period, is now seen as hopelessly heterodox. 

Recent decades have seen the domination a deep-set neoliberal understanding of the housing question. Despite the obvious and deepening failures of the current ideology, anyone who begins to question the prevalent supply-and-demand logic is widely derided. Drawing on a Marxist understanding of law, policy and economics, Against Landlords argues that a state-sponsored system of rapidly-rising rents is the real cause of the crisis. 

Instead of simply boosting supply, our focus must turn to the ways in which rents inflate the value of homes. The housing system is rooted in generational strife, in colonial and racist logic, and in regional and class divides. It produces needless misery, but the solution – abolishing landlords - would be surprisingly easy to achieve”.

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Image credit: Benjamin Elliott via Unsplash.