Housing cooperatives resisting financialization? Lessons from Hungary

Márton Czirfusz and Csaba Jelinek

Chapter 13 in Resisting the Financialization of Housing, 2026, pp 169-183 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter argues that housing cooperatives could be crucial forms of definancialized housing provision. Five factors are identified which define whether housing cooperatives are definancialized forms of housing provision. These factors are democratic governance, enabling regulation by the state, advantageous financing mechanisms, the ideological integrity of the cooperative housing movement, and the institutional ecosystem. The chapter examines the extent to which these factors were present during the state socialist expansion of housing cooperatives in Hungary. It is found that housing cooperatives were tools of commodification and financialization with limited autonomy and limited democratic decision-making. The chapter highlights current bottlenecks faced by a new wave of housing cooperativism, in particular rental housing cooperatives. It is argued that a proper regulatory framework, financial support for these initiatives, and a larger institutional ecosystem are needed to provide affordable housing through this form of housing.

Keywords: Hungary; Definancialization; Housing cooperatives; State socialism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035379637
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035379644.00021 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:25122_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().