Where the Other Half Lives

Housing has become a hot topic. The media is filled with stories of individual housing hardship and of major property-related financial crises: of crippling personal debts, rundown social housing, homelessness, mass demolition, spiralling prices, unaffordability and global recession. This book links all of these through a radical analysis that puts housing at the heart of critical economic and political debate. The authors show that these problems arise from the fact that houses are no longer seen primarily as homes for living in, but rather as a source of profit. Case studies from the UK, the US and other western countries are set into a overview of how housing has changed over the last few decades. The book also examines campaigns for better housing and explores possibilities for a different approach to this most fundamental of human needs.