Jag rekommenderar alla politiker som fallit för den marknadsliberala synen på bostadsmarknaden trots att denna marknad är så långt bort från en perfekt och fri marknad som man kan komma att läsa denna skrift av UN Habitat. Även högt utvecklade länder som Sverige kan och bör ta lärdom av de erfarenheter och den kunskap som skriften återger. Nedan återges ett kort utdrag:

“‘Housing at the Centre’ becomes imperative given the emerging forms of urbanism that are producing cities as places of exclusivity, rather than opportunity. Cities, especially in the developing world, are growing fragmented, unequal and dysfunctional with the current models of housing production and consumption at the core of these processes. While the most common problem is the shortage of adequate housing, other important challenges lay in the poor quality and location of the stock usually far from job and livelihood opportunities, lack of accessibility and services, unaffordable costs and insecurity of tenure. Some countries have managed to provide affordable housing at scale, regretfully however by often repeating the mass housing schemes, built on cheap and peripheral land, where people usually have limited access to services, jobs and opportunities. From slums to gated communities, from overcrowding to sprawl, from homelessness to the vacant houses, there is much evidence that housing is shaping cities worldwide despite regional, demographic, socioeconomic and cultural specificities. The resulting models are leading to social, environmental and financial costs far beyond what the majority cities can afford.

Housing at the Centre’ comes to restore the social dimension of housing. The commoditization of housing has strengthened the perception of shelter as a speculative financial asset, generating an artificial sense of wealth and an unsustainable cycle of debt which culminated in the housing foreclosure crisis and the global economic downturn of 2007–2009. Land and housing markets have reproduced this speculative practice in the urban domain reinforcing instead of attenuating socioeconomic and spatial inequalities. The challenges to create, preserve and improve affordable housing have grown across the globe. Indeed, this is one of the most critical problems of housing today with an increasing number of households in developing and developed country cities financially stretched by housing costs.”