Homeownership ideology, mortgage financialization and the fragile promise of property-owning democracy

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner
Friday, March 29, 2019 - 3:00pm
Add to Calendar
Date: 
Friday, March 29, 2019 - 3:00pm to 4:30pm

The Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations cordially invites you to a lecture:

Homeownership ideology, mortgage financialization and the fragile promise of property-owning democracy

by Sebastian Kohl / Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Friday, March 29 / 3:00 pm /Gellner room

Introduction: Martino Comelli (Central European University)

Abstract / Homeownership ideology emerged as the political dream to solve housing market problems and even capitalist contradictions such as inequalities by bringing more people into their own homes with the help of liberalized access to mortgages. In longer historical perspective the resulting inflation of mortgage debt, however, can be shown to have been neither necessary nor sufficient for bringing more people into homeownership. One reason is that more mortgage debt has not necessarily created more housing supply through new construction, but inflated asset prices of existing homes. Rather than the pull of the homeownership dream financed by more mortgages, the push-effect of rent regulation, crowding out rental units, produced more homeowners. The homeownership promise itself resulted in a pile of household debt, less new construction and unequal islands of high-price cities.

BIO / SEBASTIAN KOHL is a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He holds a PhD from Sciences Po Paris and the University of Cologne. His research interests include economic sociology, political economy, housing, insurances and the philosophy of the social sciences. He has published in Socio-economic Review, Urban Studies, Politics & Society, Housing Studies and the Review of International Political Economy. His recent book is "Homeownership, Renting and Society: Historical and Comparative Perspectives", published with Routledge.

The event is part of the 14th Annual Doctoral Conference (27-29 March, 2019)
read more on the conference:
https://pds.ceu.edu/annual-doctoral-conferences

For more information, follow the Doctoral School on Facebook and check out its website: pds.ceu.edu.