Enacting Decommodified Housing in Southern Europe: crises, family relations, and the future of collective property

Faced with increased housing inequalities worldwide, calls are emerging for housing models that are non-speculative and resident-led. ‘Decommodified’ housing - such as co-operative rental and limited equity ownership - is seen as a pathway for a more caring and just urban future, in contrast to global crises of housing security and affordability. Such housing models aim to transform economic, social, and political relations by transforming the role of housing in wealth inequalities, and by outlining paradigm changes in shared living and housing governance. To date, international scholarship on decommodified models has focused on countries with historically strong housing welfare, neglecting practices in ‘familistic’ housing regimes, such as Southern Europe. The EnactDECOM project will challenge the academic paradigm of the cultural and economic inevitability of individual home ownership by learning from neglected innovations in housing enacted by historical and new (<10 years) decommodification movements in the region. It will break new ground conceptually, empirically, and methodologically in urban and housing scholarship by filling substantial research gaps on past and present housing decommodification in six key Southern (Western/Eastern) European countries. By pioneering a new interdisciplinary framework, the EnactDECOM project will examine how decommodified housing practices enact transformative responses to intersecting crises and established relations to property. It will generate novel knowledge on 1) neglected histories of decommodification at risk of disappearance; 2) place-specific responses to social, economic, and political crises; 3) changing family property relations, and 4) local and transnational cultural visions of collective property. The project will test the potential for decommodification in contexts marked by dominant home ownership, familism and limited housing welfare, to advance global debates on enacting urban and housing equity.