The financialization of Canadian multi-family rental housing: From trailer to tower

August, Martine

doi:10.1080/07352166.2019.1705846

Cited by 75 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Ley, 1996; Walks and Maaranen, 2008). This research includes newer studies on financialized gentrification (August and Walks, 2018; Crosby, 2020; however, see also August, 2020). As in other national contexts, metropolises have often been the primary focus, while less attention has been paid to ‘gentrification in cities lower down the urban hierarchy’ (Dutton, 2003: 2557).…”

Section: Case Study Methodsology and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

FINANCIALIZED GENTRIFICATION AND CLASS COMPOSITION IN THE POST‐INDUSTRIAL CITY: A Rent Strike Against a Real Estate Investment Trust in Hamilton, Ontario

Risager¹

2021

Int. J. Urban Reg. Res.

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Through a case study of a rent strike against a real estate investment trust in a working‐class neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario, this article asks how we might understand class and class struggle against financialized gentrification in a post‐industrial context. While class has been central to gentrification literature, working‐class experience and struggle have often been ignored or conceptualized in a way that precludes agency. New research on financialization of housing often focuses on struggles but has so far paid limited attention to class. In this article I draw on Italian operaismo (workerism) and its concept of class composition to contribute to the current debate by suggesting that financialized gentrification and struggles against it might contribute to a recomposition of the urban working class. Through a qualitative account of the 2018 East Hamilton rent strike, I analyse this struggle as two moments of class composition in the sphere of social reproduction. First, the extraction, exploitation and displacement pressure tenants experienced is analysed through the lens of technical class composition. Second, the rent strike itself is analysed as an expression of political class composition involving a confrontation of urban capital, a politicization of housing precarity, and the building of collective, autonomous power.

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Section: Case Study Methodsology and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

FINANCIALIZED GENTRIFICATION AND CLASS COMPOSITION IN THE POST‐INDUSTRIAL CITY: A Rent Strike Against a Real Estate Investment Trust in Hamilton, Ontario

Risager¹

2021

Int. J. Urban Reg. Res.

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“…Despite the novelty of this scholarship, there are numerous empirical analyses concerning housing financialization in general (Kutz & Lenhardt, 2016 ; Migozzi, 2020 ; Sanfelici and Halbert, 2019 ; Waldron, 2018 ) and rental housing financialization in particular (Aalbers et al, 2017 ; August, 2020 ; August & Walks, 2018 ; Byrne, 2020 ; Crosby, 2020 ; Fields, 2017 ; Fields & Uffer, 2016 ; Teresa, 2016 ; Wijburg et al, 2018 ). Below is a discussion about (a) the geographical coverage within this scholarship (with some other findings) and (b) the expansion of financialization to the developing world.…”

Section: Rental Housing Financializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other relevant examples include Byrne ( 2020 ) who explored and compared rental housing financialization in the primarily homeownership societies of the UK, Ireland, and Spain. Additionally, there is a growing body of literature examining rental housing financialization in other countries/cities of the Global North such as Toronto (August & Walks, 2018 ), Ottawa (Crosby, 2020 ), Canada (August, 2020 ), or Ireland (Waldron, 2018 ).…”

Section: Rental Housing Financializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another relatively established subtheme within the financialization literature is that of gentrification. The concept of gentrification often appears in the housing financialization scholarship because the two processes are sometimes intertwined (August, 2020 ; Crosby, 2020 ; Wijburg et al, 2018 ). For example, August and Walks ( 2018 ) emphasized the rise of a new, rental form of gentrification which is caused by rental housing financialization that eventually reduces the protection of renters and diminishes public housing supply.…”

Section: Rental Housing Financializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rental tenure and rent burden: progress in interdisciplinary scholarship and pathways for geographical research

Sharma

Samarin

2021

GeoJournal

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Rental housing accommodates more than a billion tenants worldwide, and in recent years, rentership has been increasing in some countries. Given reduced access to homeownership in various locations due to several causes, it is critical to focus on rentership which has received relatively less attention compared to homeownership, especially within the geography scholarship. In this review article, we identify four key themes that have naturally emerged from the close examination of recent interdisciplinary literature on rentership and rental affordability. These include: (1) rental housing financialization; (2) the proliferation of single-family rentals resulting from the U.S. foreclosure crisis; (3) the determinants and consequences of rent burden; and (4) the relationship between rent burden and regional economic specialization. We discuss these themes and propose potential opportunities for the geographic analysis of rent burden, its determinants, and their relationships with regional economic specialization. We posit that the four identified themes have been developing in apparent isolation, thus making scholarship less consistent. Moreover, research on rent burden is disjointed in itself, which makes it difficult to establish a unified narrative and interlinked subthemes within the rent burden literature. Nonetheless, we contextualize the four themes in their application to geography and frame our discussion around the central notion of this article—rent burden.

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“…Of special concern is the way that financialization of the city via housing creates tensions 'between shareholder interests and renter needs' (Nethercote, 2019;857). Particularly where tenants lack robust legal protection, these tensions may ultimately threaten claims to place and belonging by contributing to the violence of displacement, especially for poor and working-class residents (Fields and Uffer, 2016;August, 2020).…”

Section: The Financialized Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking the financialized city: confronting capitalist urbanization through mobile popular education

Silver

Fields

Goulding

et al. 2020

Community Development Journal

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How do communities understand the highly abstract process of housing financialization? In this paper we argue that walking tours offer the capacity to develop new forms of mobile, public education to learn about the capitalist urbanization process, especially as the financialization of housing accelerates. Based on walking the city of Manchester we show that this type of learning may improve public literacy concerning the opaque and extended ways in which housing in central areas has increasingly been shaped by new types of real estate finance. Although many people in Manchester have understood the outline of these dramatic transformations, and could connect the new skyscrapers to their struggles for everyday survival, there remained a gap in detailed literacy of the actors, finances and dynamics that had changed the city so quickly. We contextualize the rapidly changing global landscape of housing since the global financial crisis of 2008 before showing how these transformations have reshaped housing in Manchester. We then describe the motivations for developing the tour, and the details of the walk itself. We conclude by suggesting that the walking tour offers new types of possibility in necessary learning and subsequent action to address capitalist urbanization.

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The financialization of Canadian multi-family rental housing: From trailer to tower

Cited by 75 publications

References 40 publications

FINANCIALIZED GENTRIFICATION AND CLASS COMPOSITION IN THE POST‐INDUSTRIAL CITY: A Rent Strike Against a Real Estate Investment Trust in Hamilton, Ontario

FINANCIALIZED GENTRIFICATION AND CLASS COMPOSITION IN THE POST‐INDUSTRIAL CITY: A Rent Strike Against a Real Estate Investment Trust in Hamilton, Ontario

Rental tenure and rent burden: progress in interdisciplinary scholarship and pathways for geographical research

Walking the financialized city: confronting capitalist urbanization through mobile popular education

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