Social housing and rent regulation are two key mechanisms in public policy aimed at ensuring affordability and preventing speculation in the real estate market. In recent decades, rising housing prices—both for ownership and rental—have created an affordability crisis in many cities, especially in larger metropolitan areas. Social housing policies and rent regulation seek to counter this trend by providing affordable options for more vulnerable populations while promoting more equitable urban development. Authors such as Raquel Rolnik and Peter Marcuse have examined these issues extensively, highlighting both the benefits and limitations of such policies.
Raquel Rolnik, in her work Urban Warfare: Housing Under the Empire of Finance, argues that the financialization of housing has transformed access to shelter into a market commodity, in which speculative investments have displaced low-income families. Rolnik explains how public policies in many countries have prioritized market interests over people’s needs, facilitating housing bubbles and excluding vulnerable groups from access to decent housing. In this context, she emphasizes the importance of strengthening social housing policies and regulating rental markets to ensure that housing remains a right rather than a luxury. Peter Marcuse, in Searching for the Just City, addresses social housing from the perspective of social and spatial justice.
For Marcuse, access to housing is one of the main determinants of urban equity, and the absence of strong social housing policies leads to segregation and the marginalization of low-income communities. He criticizes policies that rely exclusively on the market to solve the housing crisis and proposes that cities adopt more interventionist approaches, such as building social housing and implementing rent regulation, to ensure that all citizens have access to affordable housing. Both authors agree that rent regulation is a fundamental tool for preventing real estate speculation. Marcuse notes that, in many cities, uncontrolled rent increases have displaced entire communities, transforming urban centers into high-income enclaves while working families are forced to move to peripheral areas.
To counter this phenomenon, he advocates rent control policies that limit price increases and protect tenants from market abuses. Raquel Rolnik, for her part, argues that these measures must be accompanied by an expansion of social housing supply in order to provide a sustainable long-term solution. However, both authors also recognize that social housing and rent regulation policies face significant obstacles. Rolnik points out that, in many cases, local governments lack either the resources or the political will to implement such policies on a large scale.
In addition, real estate and financial sector interests often exert strong influence over political decisions, making effective reform more difficult. For this reason, Rolnik proposes a more inclusive model of governance in which affected communities play an active role in the planning and implementation of these policies. In conclusion, social housing and rent regulation policies are essential for ensuring affordability and preventing real estate speculation, especially in cities where market pressure has increased significantly. Raquel Rolnik and Peter Marcuse emphasize the need for a more interventionist role by the state, including not only rent controls but also the construction and maintenance of social housing.
Through a combination of regulation and equitable access to housing, cities can move toward fairer and more sustainable development that responds to the needs of all residents.
