Housing Inequality: The Need for a Shift in Public Policy Intervention

On the night of 14 June 2017, a 24-storey skyscraper in North Kensington, London, caught fire, leaving 71 people dead and hundreds homeless. Grenfell Tower was a public housing block, built in the early 1970s in Brutalist style, which underwent a controversial refurbishment in 2016. This tragedy in one of the richest areas of one of the richest cities on earth points to a contemporary paradox: the need for more affordable housing is far from being behind us and, indeed, is returning to the fore as a social problem. Our starting point is that housing policies in most European societies have gradually reduced their scope and, breaking with the post-war tradition of cross-class mass housing, are now limited to supporting the more vulnerable households. One of the many effects of this public policy transformation is that public intervention is now conceived as marginal, leaving the market as the main vehicle for service provision (housing, in this case). A second effect can be seen in public facility maintenance: cost cutting has trumped improvements. The Grenfell Tower fire draws attention to several aspects. Here, we will focus on three: the rise of a homeowners’ society, the link between social inequalities and housing, and the financialization of housing. The article suggests the need for a radical shift in housing policies, tackling the nexus between inequality reproduction, extraction mechanisms, and living conditions.