“Adequate Housing is a Human Right, not a privilege” according to the United Nations Human Rights conventions.  Across many capital and large cities house prices and residential rents have been on the increase in recent years. This is the result of complex factors involving chronic shortages of housing stocks, strict planning regulations, continuous urbanisation, increasing gentrification, speculative property investment, shortages of construction workforce and reduction of affordable social housing, coupled with gradual ballooning of the private real estate sector. The ongoing political developments in Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, have been attributed partly to the housing crisis that is now affecting not only low-income households but also the “middle classes”, while service sector workers can no longer afford to buy or rent. A recent policy response is the European Affordable Housing Plan’s four pillars: boosting housing supply, mobilising investment, enabling immediate support while driving reforms and protecting the most affected. However, housing shortages are hardly a “European issue” in an increasingly urbanised world facing social, demographic and economic challenges.

This Master's level seminar investigates the multiple factors leading to housing shortages, such as planning regulations restricting urban development, the older generations holding on to their family houses, the “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) attitudes of certain socio-economic groups, the treatment of housing stocks as speculative investments and retirement funds. The seminar sessions also consider spatial inequality and socio-economic segregation resulting from lack of adequate housing and how these factors influence voting behaviours and may lead to social unrest. We also consider critically potential solutions and policy responses from a critical perspective.