The Housing Crisis: Finance, Legislation, Policy, Resistance

 

by Simon Elmer

 

Hardback: £35.00
Paperback: £20.00

 

 

Description

 

First published between 2015 and 2019 on the website of Architects for Social Housing, the London-based architectural practice, the articles collected in this book analyse the financing, legislation and policy behind the UK housing crisis, as well as the resistance to it. Their focus is the housing crisis in London, where wealth and poverty meet as nowhere else in the UK, and where the housing crisis is most acute; but beyond that they look at the whole of the UK, to which housing poverty, precarity and homelessness is being exported on the London model. This makes these articles relevant beyond the London context, and of use to those trying to understand the causes of the housing crisis in their own countries.

 

For the housing crisis was and remains a global phenomenon. Explanations of this crisis, therefore, which attribute it to local, municipal or national conditions, are fundamentally flawed. These latter include that certain cities are insufficiently dense and require the demolition and densification of their public housing; or that an influx of immigrants has placed a greater burden on the housing stock; or that bureaucratic red tape is stopping property developers from building the homes we need; or that there is insufficient land freed up by planning permission on which to build. These explanations are variously applied to cities with as different populations, economies, urban topographies, housing typologies and policies as London and Hong Kong, Berlin and Vancouver, Melbourne and São Paulo. As this book will argue, these are all incorrect in their assumptions, and, indeed, deliberately obfuscate the actual causes of the global housing crisis.

 

The basic premise of this book, drawn from ASH’s seven years of work, is that the housing crisis is not a product of the failure of housing legislation and policy to house its citizens in safe, secure and affordable housing but, to the contrary, of the success of that legislation and policy in creating the conditions that produce the vast profits extracted from this crisis at every level of its production. The housing crisis, in other words, has been deliberately and carefully created. This book is about how and why.

 

The Housing Crisis: Finance, Legislation, Policy, Resistance is the second volume in the series titled the ASH Papers, which collects in book form the most important articles from the ASH website.

 

List of Contents

 

Preface  | 1. The London Clearances | 2. Blitzkrieg! Sink Estates and Starter Homes | 3. The Domesday Book: Mapping London’s Housing Crisis | 4. Resistance Begins at Home: The Housing and Planning Act | 5. 11 Myths About London’s Housing Crisis | 6. Scheming Schemes: A Street View of Gentrification | 7. iMayor: The Ideology of the Greater London Authority Housing Policy and the New Policy we need on Estate Regeneration | 8. London’s Empty Housing: Causes, Existing Policy, Future Solutions and their Enforcement | 9. London’s Most Influential: Citigroup and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis | 10. Supply and Demand in Centre Point Residences | 11. Squat Belgravia: The Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians | 12. Inequality Capital: A Power Walk | 13. Housing is not a Human Right: Housing Campaigns Before the Law | 14. Rioting, Legislation and Estate Demolition: A Chronology of Social Cleansing in London, 1999-2019 | 15. ASH Housing Manifesto 251 | Image Credits | Bibliography

 

About the Author

 

Simon Elmer was born in London and has been living in Hong Kong since 2024. In 2002 he received his PhD in the History and Theory of Art from University College London, and he has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Michigan. In 2015 he co-founded Architects for Social Housing, for which he is Head of Research. His books include Architecture is Always Political: A Communist History (2024) and with Geraldine Dening, Saving St. Raphael’s Estate: The Alternative to Demolition (2022); For a Socialist Architecture: Under Capitalism(2021); and Central Hill: A Case Study in Estate Regeneration (2018).

 

Simon’s articles have appeared in Off-Guardian, UK Column, The Daily Sceptic, Real Left, The Conservative Woman, The Exposé, People’s Lockdown Inquiry and Unity News Network. His interviews and presentations about the Great Reset can be found on the podcasts of The Delingpod, Panda, UK Column, Brokenomics, London Bitcoin Space, Elevate, Campfire Conversation, On the Fringe, Trish Wood is Critical, Tom Nelson, Thinking Coalition, Think Twice, Common Knowledge, Planet-Uplift, Radically Human, Jerm Warfare (TNT Radio), Jason Olbourne (TNT Radio), Reality Check Radio, Doc Malikand Sonia Poulton.

 

Publication Details

 

Publisher: Architects for Social Housing (March 2025)
Distributed by Lulu Press, UK
Language: English
Hardback and paperback: 320 pages | 52 illustrations
ISBN 978-1-300-56331-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-300-57297-8 (paperback)
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 in | 14 x 21.6 cm

 

Endorsements

 

‘No-one else places a forensic microscope onto proposals to redevelop social housing estates in London with the precision and awareness that Architects for Social Housing are able to achieve.’

 

Professor Murray Fraser,
Professor of Architecture and Global Culture and Vice-Dean of Research, Bartlett School of Architecture

 

‘The dismantling of the UK’s once flagship social housing programme has been presented as inevitable not optional, and fiscally sensible rather than a ticking time bomb for taxpayers. Architects for Social Housing provide the evidence needed to prove that there is another way.’

 

Dr. Harriet Harriss,
Senior Tutor in Interior Design and Architecture,
Royal College of Art

 

‘ASH’s work points to the importance of understanding regeneration as a moral issue, rooted in the question of how social needs, power and capital figure in the motivations of authorities, developers and financiers for instigating change.’

 

Dr. Juliet Davis,
Reader in Architecture and Urbanism,
Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University

 

‘A unique piece of work. I strongly recommend it to policy makers, architects, developers, social landlords and community leaders who are committed to a better future for social housing.’

 

Professor Anne Power,
Head of London School of Economics, Housing and Communities,
Honorary Fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects