Housing in Common: In Search of a Strategy for Housing Alterity in England in the 21st Century

Based in England in 1872, Engels wrote that the ‘housing question’ – that is, the appalling and exploitative housing conditions of the working class – could be solved not through housing reform but only through the ending of the social system of capitalism that produced housing scarcity (Engels 1887). More than 130 years after Engels first laid out his anti-reformist revolutionary polemic both the housing question and the social relations of capitalist exploitation are still present, with no real alternatives in sight.