A slow-onset disaster: Understanding the global housing crisis.

It is actually impossible for capitalism to address the problem of housing affordability, because embedded in the nature of profit-seeking capitalist activity in property sectors are a set of conditions that make it impossible to make profit out of low-income people. You are trying to square a circle there - relying on them supplying housing is never going to work. It doesn't matter if your in Harare, or Mumbai, or Rio de Janiero or Chicago or London - this repeats itself over and over.

Deborah Potts examines the roots and consequences of the global housing crisis - beyond supply and demand, the sharp rise in urban housing prices around the world is linked to the destruction of post-WW2 social democracy and the commodification and financialization of housing, and can only be u

Deborah is author of the book Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis from Zed Books.