Emanuele Belotti

Rental housing has been regarded as the new 'frontier for financialisation' since the 2007 financial crisis. But research examining financialisation of de-commodified rental housing is limited and is primarily focused on stock acquisitions by financial investors and the enabling role of either national or local governments. This critically overlooks the emergence of the financialised production of social rented housing, the interplay between levels of government (particularly with the regional level), and the leading role of the state in these processes. By combining a political sociology approach to policy instruments with a housing system studies perspective, the paper investigates how Italy, through the interplay between national, regional (Lombardy) and local (Milan) governments, led the financialisation of its social rented housing production. Through analyses of six decades of financial-legislative changes in the housing system regarding production/ provision, finance and land supply, it identifies a three-stage journey towards financialisation: (1) the rise and fall of publicly-owned rental social housing (1950s to 1990s); (2) the regionalisation and marketisation of the sector up to the late 2000s; and (3) the upward transfer from the first local-scale experiment with the real estate mutual investment fund in Milan to the creation of a national-scale System of Funds for the production of social rented housing. The study shows that the re-commodification of housing and land initiated in the 1980s were intertwined and a conditio-sine-qua-non for financialisation; that the state played a crafting-rather than solely enabling-role in this process; and that trans-scalar legislative-financial innovations transformed social rented housing into a liquid asset class.

The paper analyses the plurality of urban informal practices that characterize contemporary Italy in the sphere of housing, focusing on its complex connections with a variety of public institutions (e.g. laws, regulations, policies and practices). The paper discusses five cases of urban informality in Italy: the squatting of public housing in Milan; Roma camps in Rome; the borgate romane (large unauthorised neighbourhoods in the capital, which were built in the 1960s and 1970s and which have subsequently undergone a long and complex process of regular-ization); unauthorised construction, by the middle class, of second homes in coastal areas of Southern Italy; illegal subdivision of agricultural land as a standard mechanism for urban expansion in Casal di Principe, Naples. From these cases emerges a complex picture of hybrid institutions that shape and govern housing in-formalities. These hybrid institutions are composed of multifaceted networks of actors, policies, practices and rules that exist in tension with each other and contribute to favouring and shaping the production of informal space in different ways (e.g. through their action, inaction and structural features). Against the backdrop of this varied institutional framework, a selective tolerance driven mainly by politically-mediated interests emerges as the distinctive feature of the public approach to housing informality in Italy. The paper aims to develop an innovative research approach to informal housing in Italy by overcoming traditional boundaries between research 'objects' and by looking at political uses and forms of in-stitutionalisation that are deployed across housing informalities. By doing so, it also contributes to the literature which analyses informality through the lenses of state theory. Simultaneously, it represents a call for international research to investigate the similarities in the patterns of housing informality-and their multifaceted politics-in Mediterranean welfare states.

Since the financial crisis of 2008/09, the “financialisation of housing” has become a buzzword widely used within and outside academia to describe economic and structural changes in the housing market. One of the most visible dimensions of this “financialization” is the growing presence of institutional investors as property owners in manifold cities across Europe. This trend has come along with a burgeoning housing affordability crisis that affects at new households in major cities. While housing is placed again under pressure, new questions arise in relation to the role of institutional investors as active agents of housing supply. There is no clear evidence of how institutional investors affect local housing markets and how they relate to housing affordability pressures in each city. Additionally, little is known about how housing policies and politics engage with institutional investors as novel housing actors and which are the challenges faced in housing policy development. To shed light on these questions that still remain underresearched, we have selected seven cities that vary significantly in terms of rental systems and market dynamics, housing policies and provision to examine the different, thus the city-specific effects of this general trend across Europe.
The financialization of housing has already become a major issue in urban and housing studies and research has disclosed the growing relevance of institutional investors, financial motives, financialised management and calculation techniques in the transformation of housing into an asset class (Gabor & Kohl 2022; Wu et al., 2020; Fernandez & Aalbers, 2020; Aalbers et al., 2020). However, after more than 15 years of interdisciplinary research it has become clear that the term "financialisation" is developing as a relatively imprecise umbrella for a broad variety of topics. We tender that the actual “doing” of financialization is highly context-bound, defined by spatial and temporal local particularities and, as such, subject to an immense array of variations. For example, while in Germany and Sweden institutional investors have been buying up entire housing estates and formerly public housing companies, in other cities of central and eastern Europe real estate investment trusts or real estate funds are gaining a foothold in niche markets such as care facilities, student dormitories or micro-apartments. In Spain and Ireland, and more recently, in Greece financialization is often discussed in relation to debt management and the securitization of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs). In our study, we explore these differences and describe the variety of ways in which institutional investors have established themselves in European cities.
The chief aim of our study is to shed light on the role and strategies of institutional investors in local housing markets. First, we trace how institutional investors approach local housing markets in seven different countries. Second, we explore how institutional investors' activities enmesh with the provision of affordable housing. Third, we reflect on the local specificities and the way institutional investors become embedded in local real-estate markets to consider why investment strategies differ significantly amongst cities and, therefore, we disclose the different gateways in the cities under study. In doing so, we highlight the role of local context in the path-dependency of the financialisation of housing. A fourth focus is on the interplay between institutional investors, policy actors and governments. We assume that in a highly regulated field such as urban and housing policy, different forms of exchange and cooperation between institutional investors and local policy actors emerge in each case, reflecting local specificites and dynamics.
To address the above, we have chosen a comparative case study design. Moving away from a conventional comparative approach of identifying similarities and differences, we aim at teasing out how the general restructuring of financialised housing is continuously restructured and reshaped by local dynamics. This helps disclose the path-dependency of housing finanicialisation across seven cities. In other words, it is not only the generic trend of housing financialisation that shapes local housing markets, but local circumstances that define the process of housing financialisation in each case. As such, in this comparative approach we bring together cases that represent different rental systems, different ideologies of housing provision, policies and planning and different market dynamics to explore how the contigent trajectories of housing financialisation are defined by local dynamics and how institutional investors reshape their strategies to adjust and/or accommodate to local circumstances.
To shed light on the role of institutional investors as key actors in the finanicalisation of housing against the background of different local contexts, seven case studies were selected to offer key information on the structure of the housing markets and the current challenges for affordable housing supply. For this, London, Brussels and Milan are selected as cities with a traditionally ownership-centered housing market and in the case of Brussels and Milan with a weak social housing sector and weak rent regulations. This is to some degree also the case of Warsaw where the housing market transitioned from a planned economy to a “super homeownership society” with a peculiar mix of housing rights and a lack of regulation. This contrasts Malmö and Berlin, two cities that were at least in the past characterised by very strong regulation of the private market and a strong non-profit sector. Athens stands as a case of extreme austerity, indebtedness and impoverishment of the local population, forming a very specific environment for the financialisation of housing.
The case study chapters that follow analyse the activities of institutional investors and describe their role in the supply of affordable housing. Additionally, the political and planning instruments which cities employ vis á vis institutional investors are presented. Of particular interest, are the forms of public-private collaboration through which city planners and policy-makers interact with institutional investors. The presentation of the seven case studies is followed by a cross-case summary in which the comparison of the strategies and tragectory of institutional investors is used to identify the path-dependecies of housing financialisation, and the way local contingencies work out the interaction between investors and the political-administrative system. The impact of institutional investors on housing affordability is a recurring theme underlying the queries under scrutiny.
The work presented here is the outcome of a six-month project which was financed by Science Po Paris and included scholars from Athens, Berlin, Brussels London, Malmö, Milan and Warsaw. It has built on the long-term engagement of the participating scientists with their respective cities and a highly developed expertise in the housing conditions, market dynamics, planning regulations and policy issues in different contexts. Nevertheless, the study has an explorative character. It provides first hand ideas about the different financial logics across Europe which need further examination.

The relation between processes of financialisation and welfare has been acquiring an increasing relevance within the international debate, dealing especially with the way in which the financial realm replace welfare in satisfying people’s basic needs in several fields.
In the light of the transformations of welfare and under the pressure of austerity constraints,financial actors and tools are significantly affecting the new arrangement of local welfare systems even in Italy, but this phenomenon by now remains a marginal issue within the Italian literature on welfare. Stressing the need for more research on this process of ‘financialisation of welfare’, this paper proposes a general (although non-exhaustive) picture of major trends characterising the phenomenon, identifying three main channels through which welfare appears to be opened up to financial markets.

Il fenomeno dell’abitare informale è stato per lo più identificato nell’auto-costruzione abusiva di immobili riconosciuta dalla letteratura quale tratto peculiare dell’urbanismo italiano. Meno trattato è il fenomeno delle occupazioni di alloggi e stabili a scopo abitativo, malgrado sembri svolgere una funzione altrettanto consolidata entro il sistema.
I fattori che alimentano il fenomeno risiedono nell’assetto del sistema abitativo – caratterizzato da preponderanza della proprietà, offerta di affitto compressa e poco accessibile e residualità dell’edilizia pubblica –; ma anche nella crescente vulnerabilità: invecchiamento della popolazione e incremento di nuclei mono-componente; liberalizzazione del mercato del lavoro (con implicazioni rilevanti per i giovani); rilevanza acquisita dal fenomeno migratorio.
L’esito combinato di questi fattori ha indebolito già limitate condizioni di affordability del mercato dell’affitto: un meccanismo illustrato dall’incremento degli sfratti per morosità incolpevole a partire dal 2008. Il cortocircuito tra dinamiche di espulsione dal comparto abitativo e indebolimento della capacità di “assorbimento” dell’edilizia pubblica così connota il quadro entro cui il fenomeno dell’abitare informale si è riprodotto con rinnovato vigore, specie nelle grandi città.
Il contributo considera forme di occupazione di singoli alloggi (più spesso pubblici) e interi stabili, in cui i movimenti per il diritto all’abitare possono essere variamente coinvolti e non figurano sempre come promotori. L’occupazione di stabili è il cuore del repertorio di questi movimenti; nel caso di singoli alloggi, invece, la loro azione si limita per lo più a fornire consulenza legale e supportare forme di resistenza a sfratti e sgomberi, al fine di negoziare soluzioni tutelanti.
Dimensioni e storicità dell’abitare informale paiono qualificare il fenomeno come una componente strutturale del sistema abitativo. L’abitare informale non è sottratto alla regolazione pubblica: le sue manifestazioni sono andate associandosi a una stratificazione di misure formali e specifici assetti di governance. L’abitare informale fungere così da “cuscinetto” per la quota di popolazione espulsa dal comparto abitativo.
L’azione pubblica in questo campo è però per lo più affidata a misure emergenziali. Questo stile di governo a Roma ha trovato declinazione nella gestione della cosiddetta “emergenza abitativa”, secondo modalità extra-ordinarie di intervento, spesso negoziate da istituzioni di governo e movimenti, ma implementate senza valutare i costi e assorbire risolutivamente l’emergenza.
Sia a Roma che a Milano, si è fatta strada una modalità di trattamento della questione come emergenza di ordine pubblico, che si accompagna alla pericolosa contrazione degli spazi di negoziazione. L’alternativa non è la legittimazione incondizionata, ma una inclusione abitativa della “città informale” che tenga conto delle spinte generative associate alle reti di attori territoriali attive su questo fronte.

In June 2022, a group of activists, students, and scholars gathered in Barcelona for the 8th annual International Geographies of Justice Summer Institute (IGJ), Housing Justice in Unequal Cities, co-sponsored by Antipode and the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy. IGJ attendees included people from within movement and activist spaces, academics, and non-profit organizations who share the common vision of working toward housing justice. This article features a collective conversation that took place with IGJ attendees who participated in a public panel discussion attended by activists, community members, and people interested in hearing from local and international panelists about the state and direction of the housing justice movements in Glasgow, Berlin, New York, and Barcelona respectively. Thematically, the conversation held among IGJ attendees to produce the following manuscript focused on the broad and interconnected pillars of housing injustice that repeatedly arose in conversation throughout our time together in Barcelona, including financialization, activism and organizing, and housing justice movements broadly speaking.