disparate phenomena like the sub-prime crisis in the US with the moves
to offer micro-finance and formal title to slum dwellers in Latin America
and the Indian subcontinent. Policies like these were 'not the product
of an unsuccessful attempt to amplify the private housing market to
embrace the poorest', but 'resulted from a clear and aggressive policy of
destruction of the existing alternatives of housing access for the poorest'.
An early example of these, Rolnik finds, vvas the housing policy brought
into Chile under Augusto Pinochet, through which substandard housing
is offered at subsidised rates to the poor. Allegedly radical projects such
as Alejandro Aravena's 'half-house' housing schem es can be seen in this
context, not as an alternative to the status quo, but as an incarnation
of it, combining the provision of deliberately third-rate housing with
the goal of making slum dwellers into asset owners.
There are frequent flashes in the book to accounts of inspiring tenant
struggles from around the world, from anti-bedroom tax activists
in Manchester to defenders of common land in t h e Maldives, but there
is caution on recent governmental efforts to solve t h e problem. The major
example is Brazil's Minha Oasa, ~finha Vida (My House, My Life)
programme, a pillar of the Workers' Party governments of Lula da Silva
and Dilma Rousseff. This might look, to the untrained eye, like
a mass programme of social housing, but Rolnik finds there a previous
government's plan for the expansion of home ownership that the
Workers' Party - eager not to scare off capital - tried to push left
by increasing supply, driving down prices and trying to encourage
co-operative management of the new estates. But this new state-
subsidised private housing was peripheral, financially complex and
occasionally corrupt, serving to bring the leftist government into close
alliance with the old vested interests. A smaller-scale example of the
failure of reform comes in Capital City, through the New York mayoralty
of Bill de Blasio, whose combination of radical rhetoric and fiscal
conservatism has failed completely to solve that city's affordability crisis.
So far, most 'solutions' to a problem created by finance have been
financial - the UK's Help to Buy scheme is briefly noted by Rolnik as a
particularly moronic example. The notion that it can all be sorted out by
more 'investment' is mocked - one section of Urban Wa1ja1·e simply lists
the mass demolitions and clearances of public housing from cities that
have hosted the Olympics. Both authors agree on the total inadequacy of
slogans like 'build more bloody houses'; as Rolnik points out, 'in reality,
highly priced homes abound', while Stein notes that, 'simply adding
housing supply does not necessarily drive do·wn overall prices'. This is
because 'real estate functions as plural - rather than singular - markets,
meaning that increasing supply at the top of the market does nothing to
reduce demand at the bottom'. Londoners wh o can walk from the tangle
of new towers in an area like Nine Elms to the subdivided houses and
privately let ex-cotmcil flats around can see this very clearly. Meanwhile,
those who've praised Karakusevic Oarson's Oolville Estate in Hackney -
where new council housing is paid for by two new private David
Ohipperfield high-rises - should read thoroughly the sections of Capital
City on what new shiny tower s do to the (private) rents next door.
All this could make t hese books hard reading for architects and
plaJ.mers. Much of Stein's book fo cuses on the paradox of residents actually
opposing new in·vestment; a n ew metro line or tram, a new park, art galler y
or sports centre always has t h e concomitant of rising real-estate values- in maJ.1Y cases, that's precisely what they're for. Stein has
a starker analysis of 'gentrification' than most: he has little to say about
interesting or embarrassing subcultures, much more on how
RIGHT This estate in the
suburbs of Santarem, Brazil,
was part of the government's
much-vaunted Minha Oasa
1\finha Vida. The programme
had lofty aims but was
doomed to fail
much local government in the 1970s and 1980 s welcomed
the movement of young middle-class people into inner cities -
their contributions much more well received than hearing yet
more complaints from New Yorkers about infestations and
rent control. This shift was, 'a boon to politicians who were>-~
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