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The way housing affordability evolved since WW2 in Greece—and in its capital city in particular—is an example of how the South European welfare system managed, for several decades, to provide socially inclusive housing solutions without developing the services of a sizeable welfare state until global forces and related policies brought it to an end. The increased role of the market in housing provision since the 1980s, the rapid growth of mortgage lending in the 1990s, the neoliberal policy recipes imposed during the crisis of the 2010s and the unleashed demand for housing in the aftermath of the crisis have led to increased housing inequalities and converged the outcome of this South European path with the outcome of undoing socially inclusive housing solutions provided by the welfare state in other contexts. The article follows longstanding and recent developments concerning the housing model in Greece and especially in the city of Athens, focusing on mechanisms that have allowed access to affordable housing for broad parts of the population during different historical periods, and examines the extent to which the current housing model remains inclusive or not. The aim here is to discuss the most important challenges concerning access to decent housing and highlight the need for inclusive housing policies to be introduced into the current social and political agenda.

Contrasting the mass out-migration of the younger populace following the economic crisis in Greece and the simultaneous large inflow of refugees, the city of Athens has lately become an attractive place for tourists and lifestyle migrants. This article provides a better understanding of the marginal, yet unexplored in-migration of relatively affluent Europeans moving to Athens to work in the growing offshore service sector. Athens is an attractive place for offshore service work companies, as low salaries can be compensated for by “the sun,” “Greek culture,” and “low cost and high standard of living” (Bellos, 2019). Based on interviews with Finnish offshore workers, this article argues that the local context might not render all lifestyle migrants from wealthier countries similarly privileged. Due to their low salaries and recent changes in the local housing market fuelled by touristification, offshore service workers face a lack of affordable housing. The article further argues that affluent transnational migration is a multidimensional phenomenon, which needs to be contextualized, and which has nuanced, widespread effects on local housing markets and neighbourhood life.

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