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Housing after the Crisis

Financialization, Divergent Housing Policies and the Coping Strategies of Households

Summary/Abstract: Housing is one of the fundamental elements of social reproduction, and also a market through which financial extraction from households takes place. We investigate the contradictory relation of these two functions of housing in Hungary in the context of the long economic downturn starting with the crisis of the 1970s. Within this period we focus particularly on the years following the economic crisis of 2008 and the political turn of 2010, which are starting points of the „System of National Cooperation”; the new conservative regime built up by prime minister Viktor Orbán and his party Fidesz . First, we analyze how the financialization of housing unfolded in Hungary primarily through mortgages, and what form it currently takes in a transformed system of semiperipheral hegemony. Second, we give an overview of how the housing policies of different governments throughout the studied period mediated between external economic pressures and social reproductive needs. The third part of the article discusses informal housing practices, which develop when the state and market do not provide housing solutions, and households rely on their own resources in responding to their housing needs. We discuss the global economic conditions of housing (financialization), housing policies and informal practices of households as different constituent elements of the same process. Housing is both an important vehicle for investment and financial extraction, and a precondition for social reproduction. The tension of these two „expectations” from housing guides us through the various aspects and chronology of our analysis.

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