The research builds on two premises:

First, housing systems, akin to welfare systems, are embedded in broader political, economic and social structures. They differ across societies and over time, reflecting differences and changes in the political economy of class coalitions and prevailing power relations.

Second, housing systems have significant consequences for social stratification. The way they are structured affects inequalities along multiple dimensions, including those related to housing conditions, the distribution of property wealth, as well as spatial inequalities.

Taken together, housing systems reflect existing social relations and at the same time influence them in different ways. Based on this, research within the theme is broadly oriented around three questions:

• How are housing systems transforming in the context of macro-societal changes such as neoliberal state restructuring, financialization, rentier capitalism, or the emergence of platform capitalism?
• How do these changes in housing systems interact with transformations in related policy fields (social security, pension systems, labour markets)?
• What are the distributive consequences of these changes, in terms of housing conditions, wealth accumulation, as well as spatial (in)equalities?

While housing systems research traditionally looks at the national level, the research theme has a particular interest in urban housing systems. 

The Housing Research theme is embedded in the activities at the Department of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy. It contributes to faculty-wide research in the field of Social Infrastructure and is associated with the TU Wien research field Urban and Regional Transformation. Team members feed the topics of the research theme into the study program Spatial Planning at TU Wien. In this context, the writing of diploma theses is also possible. The research projects of the theme are funded by national and international agencies. We cooperate with partners from academia, public administration and practice.