The housing regime as a barrier to climate action

America’s current housing regime—meaning the ways housing is allocated, owned, taxed, and regulated—is a major barrier to the kinds of collective action needed to decarbonize the economy and the atmosphere. We outline why this is the case and argue that major reforms to the housing regime are necessary for fostering collective climate action. In this commentary we argue that America’s current housing regime is a major barrier to collective climate action. By housing regime we mean the ways housing is allocated, owned, taxed, and regulated. In the U.S. the vast majority of residents must secure their housing in the private market. Moreover, a century of federal and local policy has encouraged, subsidized, and sustained homeownership over renting, particularly outside of dense urban cores, and created a system of residential racial and class segregation. This support of the private procurement of place creates distinct interests for those who own, acting as a social wedge between groups and incentivizing atomistic instead of solidaristic climate politics1. By collective climate action we mean broad, national-level, systemic changes to the economy–especially land use policy–that would reduce carbon emissions and mitigate against the most catastrophic effects of intensifications of weather cycles on people and the built environment. To be sure, the current housing regime does promote some forms of localized, solidaristic adaptation2, but these forms of mitigation and adaptation generally favor already advantaged people and places at the expense of poorer and marginalized communities. In short, major changes are needed to America’s housing regime in order to foster climate action.