The really big contradiction: homeownership discourses in times of financialization

Belgium is a typical homeowner society where homeownership is not only the largest but also the ‘normalized’ form of tenure. The origins of the Belgian homeownership ideology go back to the early days of industrialization but the discourses surrounding the ideology are reproduced in the 21st century. Our investigation of the largest region of Belgium, Flanders, reveals four main homeownership discourses: affordable homeownership, conservative housing finance, asset-based welfare and tenure neutrality. With a nod to Kemeny’s ‘The Really Big Trade-Off Between Homeownership and Welfare’, we demonstrate that there is also a ‘Really Big Contradiction’ between the discourses that support homeownership as the ‘normalized’ form of tenure in Belgium and the reality of declining affordability, progressively less conservative housing finance, the fractions and inequalities of housing-based wealth, and the lack of tenure neutrality. In short, we argue that the financialized homeownership model is undermining the stability of homeowner realities and practices, but not so much the discourses and ideologies that support and reinforce the homeowner society.