Die Wohnungsfrage

The housing question was formulated in the face of the fundamental societal changes of industrial urbanisation in the 19th century. Today, it has gained high priority yet again. From the very beginning, the housing question has encompassed two aspects: how to define standards of decent housing and how to make such adequate housing available for all people? Both questions cannot be conclusively answered. The questions are repeatedly renewed in the course of social and political change. However, what one might call the “unanswerability of the housing question” does not imply that housing policy has no affect. The article describes four different phases of housing politics in Germany to demonstrate this: The politicisation of the housing question before 1914, the “golden age of housing politics” in the Weimar Republic, the withdrawal of state housing interventions and the commodification of housing in the FRG, and the financialisation of the housing market since 2000. Finally, the author propounds some arguments regarding the “unanswerability of the housing question” and puts forward reflections on relevant issues for labour union politics.