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Through the Roof

Through the Roof

Through the Roof

Housing, Capitalism, and the State in America and Germany
Alexander Reisenbichler, University of Toronto
August 2025
Not yet published - available from August 2025
Paperback
9781009596657

    Housing is the defining issue of our time, driving a persistent affordability crisis, financial instability, and economic inequality. Through the Roof examines the crucial role of the state in shaping the housing markets of two economic powerhouses-the United States and Germany. The book starts with a puzzle: laissez-faire America has vigorously supported homeownership markets with generous government programs, while social democratic Germany has slashed policy support for both homeownership and rental markets. The book explains why both nations have adopted such radically different and unexpected housing policy approaches. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews with policymakers, it argues that contrasting forms of capitalism-demand-led in the United States and export-oriented in Germany-resulted in divergent housing policies. In both countries, these policies have subsequently transformed capitalism itself.

    • Synthesizes debates on the politics of housing by bringing together perspectives from political science, economics, history, and sociology
    • Provides the first English-language volume that extensively covers German housing programs from the early twentieth century until today
    • Analyzes archival material and interviews to develop a focused comparison of American and German housing policymaking

    Product details

    August 2025
    Paperback
    9781009596657
    312 pages
    229 × 152 mm
    Not yet published - available from August 2025

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Discovering Housing-Based Growth in America
    • 3. Germany's Postwar Housing and Export Miracles
    • 4. Financializing the American Economy and Housing Market
    • 5. Path Shifting of German Housing Programs
    • 6. The Double Down: Nationalizing American Housing Finance
    • 7. The Double Back: Retrenching German Housing Programs
    • 8. Paradoxes of American and German Housing Policy.
      Author
    • Alexander Reisenbichler , University of Toronto

      Alexander Reisenbichler is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His work explores the political economies of Western Europe and the United States, with a focus on housing, credit, and social policy.