ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the financialization of the subsidized rental housing. Financialization is a dynamic and interactive process that continuously reshapes the market. Governments in the US, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands all took steps towards deregulating their subsidized rental housing stocks through new regulation. New York City required only modest intervention; Rent-stabilized housing was already largely owned by for-profit landlords, many trying to minimize or end rent stabilization for decades. The UK, the privatization of the council housing sector goes back to the Thatcher years, during which the budgets for council housing were deliberately cut and social landlords forced into accepting a Right to buy from their tenants. The idea of housing associations enabled the British government, on the one hand, to continue their privatization efforts and, on the other, to safeguard the continued existence of some social rental housing a typical Third Way solution.
