Geography Department Seminar: How to solve the housing crisis? Social Housing in Germany and Israel compared

Abstract:

In the twentieth century as part of the establishment of the welfare state, social housing had been a major segment of housing provision in both Germany and Israel. After the neoliberal transformation beginning in the 1980s, this housing sector directed at working and middle-class household has been marginalized in both contexts. Against this background, the presentation compares the present conditions of the social housing sector in these two countries in terms of its social function, its institution organization, and its spatial form. As a result, it argues that to solve the current housing crisis we do not only need massive investments to increase the social housing sector. We also need a qualitative new institutional form that defines social housing as a permanent and democratically organized social infrastructure directed at broader sections of society.

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Tovi Fenster