Crisis, ideology and social housing

Abstract

The paper considers the development of social housing in Iceland, from its beginnings with the construction of the first workers’ dwellings in the 1930s. Housing in Iceland is compared with that of the neighboring countries and an overview of recent sociological housing research is presented. Also, the roles of the labour movement and the Icelandic political parties in the formation of housing policy are described. The paper comes to the main conclusion that social housing in Iceland developed quite slowly until the 1960s, both in comparison with the overall development of domestic housing construction and with the amount of social housing construction in other countries. Uniquely, Icelandic social housing has mainly been owner-occupied, albeit with restricted rights for the owners to sell such flats freely on the housing market. Initially, the labour movement and the workers’ parties were the main proponents of social housing, but gradually the initiative in Icelandic social housing construction was transferred to the state and to the municipal authorities. By the turn of the new millennium, the growing strength of neo-liberal ideological hegemony led to the privatization of the entire Icelandic owner-occupied social housing stock.