The housing question is a problem that the bourgeoisie will never be able to solve. Lack of affordable housing, tiny apartments, the spread of slums, lack of green space, infernal traffic, unbearable pollution in cities, and the hasty construction of buildings (which, due to shoddy materials can quickly fall apart) are constantly recurring social ills that capitalism cannot get rid of.

For these reasons, the housing question affects society as a whole, and is expressed differently depending on class. Both the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat are greatly harmed by the rising cost of living, but their interests and solution to the housing question diverge significantly. For many proletarians, a dwelling that meets their most basic human needs remains an unattainable mirage. Meanwhile, the petty bourgeois is lulled into the incongruous, reactionary dream of turning everyone into a landlord. The working-class aristocracy strata partake in this petty-bourgeois illusion. For the bourgeoisie, housing is an excellent source of business, where profit and rent are intertwined, embracing each other in pompous and solemn nuptials.

But once the veil of the dominant ideology is torn away, an elementary truth emerges: the class interest of the proletariat does not consist in the aspiration to turn all members of society into homeowners. As Engels taught us, the solution to the housing question will be found only after the revolution, through the process of abolishing private property and overcoming the antithesis between town and country.

“The housing question can only be solved when society has been sufficiently transformed for a start to be made towards abolishing the antithesis between town and country, which has been brought to an extreme point by present-day capitalist society. Far from being able to abolish this antithesis, capitalist society on the contrary is compelled to intensify it day by day […]; it is not the solution of the housing question which simultaneously solves the social question, but only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible To want to solve the housing question while at the same time desiring to maintain the modern big cities is an absurdity. The modern big cities, however, will be abolished only by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, and when this is once on the way then there will be quite other things to do than supplying each worker with a little house for his own possession.” (Engels, The Housing Question)

The Peculiarities of the Housing Question in Romania

Romania has had a peculiar history when it comes to the issue of housing workers who migrated to the cities in search of a better life. In the days of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceauşescu, recently urbanized proletarians were crammed into cheaply built apartments, which often lacked basic services like heating. Although many large buildings with numerous apartments were built, many workers worked in the city yet lived in the countryside, forced to commute every day. In the final years of the nationalist regime, which tried to pass itself off as “socialist”, electricity, heating, and TV programs were provided for only a few hours each day.

Following the regime change brought about by the 1989 coup, there has been no state policy aimed at modernizing the cheap apartments inherited from Stalinist capitalism, which remain in a deplorable state to this day. Thanks to the post-1989 privatizations, most Romanians were able to buy the apartments they lived in at low prices, making Romania third in the world for homeownership rates. It is common for many countries that have passed through self-styled “socialist” nationalist regimes to occupy the top spots in this ranking; in general, t home ownership is far more common in Eastern European countries than in Western Europe. Romania’s homeownership rate in 2023 was 95.3%, surpassed only by Kosovo (97.8%) and Albania (96.3 percent). The situation is radically different in much more economically prosperous countries, such as Germany (49.1%) and Switzerland (42.2%) which have the lowest homeownership rates in Europe. Reading these statistics, one gets the distinct impression that, in the current stage of capitalism, both a country’s housing quality and its economic prosperity are inversely proportional to the percentage of homeowners.

The mass sale of apartments at below-market prices by the Romanian state after 1989 has been justified by bourgeois specialists as follows:

“Although selling public housing stock to former tenants at token prices—often below the market level—was thought to be a form of reducing the state’s expenses with these homes, it was also perceived as a ‘shock absorber.’ By turning more households into properties, the negative social impact of the transition period was reduced. As with all avoided crises during the 1990s, these legislative moves ‘bought time.’ The negative effects, however, were thrown into the future, both at the level of the public housing sector and at the private level. Regardless of the sector, be it public or private, local public authorities have abdicated their responsibilities. […] In the private sector, shifting the costs of maintaining a stock of poor-quality housing onto a low-income population—severely impoverished by the transition to democracy and made owners overnight without any support—created a recipe for the rapid degradation of housing in Romania.

The “damage relief” provided by shock therapy proved to be short-lived. It did not take long for low-quality apartments to further degrade, as the state stopped investing in them. As one paper states, “in 2001, approximately 2.5 million homes (35% of the total stock) were in a state of advanced degradation that required the rehabilitation of the infrastructure and equipment urgently.” But the state has not taken any responsibility. The state no longer owned these buildings, so it did not have to use funds to repair them and provide services, as was the case before 1989.

Currently 50% of Romanians live in overcrowded dwellings. In fact, the high rate of home ownership combined with overcrowded housing has earned Romania the nickname “Country of Paradoxes.” We quote from a news article on the subject:

“In the EU, the recommended living space is 30 square meters per person. In our country, however, it is reduced by half or even less. Almost half of Romanian families live in one or at most two rooms. [..]

“Grandparents, parents and children live together in many homes. Romania has one of the highest proportions of young people still living with their parents. In fact, 4 out of 10 young Romanians up to the age of 34 live under the same roof with their parents. Living in overcrowded houses is not the only problem. 1 in 4 Romanians live in severe poverty. Statistics show that a third of homes have no sanitary facilities, and 40% of households need current or capital repairs. [..]

“The majority of Romanians live in houses built between 1919-1980, even though around 50,000 new homes are built every year. Housing market studies show that there is a shortage of one million homes in Romania.”

It is important to note that, due to the significant reduction in industrial production since 1989, millions of Romanians have left the country, and the population of most cities has decreased over time. There are only three cities that have a larger population than in 1992: Iași, Cluj-Napoca, and Bragadiru. Cluj-Napoca, also known as Cluj, is located in the northwest of the country. The city grew with the booming IT industry, while Bragadiru developed due to its proximity to Romania’s capital Bucharest. Many towns that depended on one industry (such as mining towns) became severely depopulated within 20 to 30 years.

Many capitalists greatly benefited from the post-1989 situation, as land where old industrial centers once stood was sold at such low prices that shopping malls, apartments, and offices could be built. In 1995, the state passed a law that returned land expropriated between 1945 and 1989 to its former owners The consequence was that many workers who had been relocated to live on land expropriated by the former “socialist” nation-state were evicted and forced to go elsewhere. Corrupt state officials handed forests and natural parks over to capitalists, who then used these lands for large-scale real estate speculations by building large-scale apartments. And thus, the so-called “housing mafia” emerged.

Urban Gigantism and Debasement of Living Conditions

Bucharest is a prime example of what the housing question presents itself as in the capitalist regimes. Romania’s capital ranks second in Europe for time lost in traffic due to road congestion.

“Driving in the city’s dense urban area lost 143 hours yearly to traffic. People driving on Bucharest’s roads spent 277 hours commuting at peak hours.” The heavy traffic is partly due to the large number of commuters, as 700,000 of Bucharest’s workers reside in surrounding counties within a 100-kilometer radius. In 2020, 136,700 people commuted daily using their personal cars. Traffic is also the leading cause of air pollution in Bucharest, resulting in multiple fines from the National Environmental Guard. The most recent fine, issued on October 25, 2024, amounted to 100,000 lei (approximately 20,000 euros) for “failing to implement measures to reduce air pollutant concentrations in Bucharest’s congestion zones, as required during the previous inspection.”

This situation, which renders the city unlivable in part due to the persistent traffic congestion largely driven by private transportation, is not alleviated even by the extensive public transportation network. The Bucharest Transport Company’s (STB) network is the fourth largest on the continent. It transports 2.15 million passengers a day, includes 130 bus lines, 17 trolleybus lines and 26 streetcar lines, while the STV (Transport Company of Voluntari, a city in Ilfov County, which surrounds Bucharest) uses more than 200 buses (purchased with European funds) for regional transport. Yet, public transport is still very crowded, especially during peak hours. The subway also transports at least 800,000 people every day (2019 figures). There are 83 trains, 13 of which were recently purchased.

The deterioration of the state of housing, especially in recent years, has been dramatic; thousands of apartments have been left without heating and hot water, and damages occur daily in the 60-year-old network.

This demonstrates that widespread homeownership, even among workers, is by no means synonymous with prosperity, as maintenance once covered by the state now falls on the meager wages of the proletariat. Meanwhile, real estate speculation is rampant. Thanks to this process, opportunistic businessmen are able to appropriate substantial portions of surplus value by turning parks and forests into concrete buildings. All of this occurs under the banner of the mineralization of the biosphere, driven by the reckless, relentless pursuit of capital in search of its own valorization.

There are countless instances of new apartments being built illegally, without permits from the authorities or safety inspections, making them potential death traps in the event of an earthquake or fire.

Large areas of natural parks were transferred to a single heir of the boyar family, who sold them to their current owner. One such example is Titan Park, which is 12 hectares. Once again, the “flexibility” of bourgeois law in favor of capital’s interests has proven itself. Although public green spaces were not normally eligible for “retrocession” (a practice in which property ceded during the old regime is returned after 1989), through backstage maneuvers, many parts of Bucharest’s parks have been returned to the heirs of the expropriated. These include portions of Titan, Bordei, Verdi, Tineretului, Plumbuita, Herăstrău, and many other green areas, totaling over 200 hectares. In the case of Titan Park, several trials were held to reverse the decision to return it to its former owners, but with no positive outcome. On top of it, over the last 4 years, 21 fires have been set in this area by unknown individuals, as well as illegal deforestation, poisoning of trees, etc.

In the capitalist regime, speculation and the plunder of land by “cement lords” often arise as essential aspects of the housing market. But the performance of that market is affected by the overall performance of the economy, which is ultimately dependent on industrial accumulation cycles. In Romania, the housing price index has experienced a sharp decline due to the 2008 global crisis. This drastic decline was followed by a phase of substantial stagnation that continued through 2015, and was marked by further declines. Finally, there was fairly sustained growth, although punctuated by slowdowns and episodic setbacks, which has continued its ascent to the present. The trend is described by the graph below, which showcases the evolution of the housing price index:

The rapid urbanization of rural populations and internal migration to more economically prosperous areas in large cities is often accompanied by the appearance of slums. Many Romanian cities have their own “bad neighborhoods,” as is the case with the Pata Rât area in Cluj, which is located right next to a landfill. In Bucharest, the Ferentari and Rahova neighborhoods are generally considered to have a high crime rate, notorious for drug trafficking and abuse. There is also a racial component to this problem, as these ghettos are generally populated by Romani people, who are discriminated against in every social aspect. This is an old script staged a thousand and one times by bourgeois society: discriminate against an ethnic minority, push it to the outskirts of the city, where proper infrastructure is lacking, and then blame the “degradation” and spread of crime on the minority.

Homelessness is another well-known phenomenon. In Romania, the number of homeless people is estimated at around 15,000, with 5,000 in Bucharest alone, and about 350 of them die each year due to exposure to the terrible living conditions. 65% of them have no identification cards, so it is impossible for these people to find a job or request social services. In Bucharest, there were only 420 shelters for homeless people in 2020.

The Eternal Deception of “Public Housing”

“Public housing” is housing built at state expense and rented to those who cannot afford to buy housing at market prices. Houses must meet certain minimum requirements for electricity, running water, toilets, space for resting and cooking. Available space is calculated based on the size of the tenant’s family. For many Romanians, even these minimum requirements constitute a privilege.

Public housing rent is set at about 10 percent of the tenant’s income, and therefore, employment is required for a tenant to be eligible. The tenant must also have a wage below the average level, not be a current homeowner, and not have bought and sold a home after 1990.

Very few requests for social housing have actually been met by the Romanian state over the years. In the period spanning from 2010 to 2022, out of over 30,000 poor families making requests for such dwellings in Bucharest alone, only 1,095 dwellings have been allocated. To add insult to injury, government authorities from Bucharest, known for corruption and behind-the-scenes deals, did not allocate available housing to elements from the most deprived social strata, but favored the middle classes and state officials.

Of course, building public housing cannot be a solution to the housing question either. Capitalists would have to step in to build them and they would have to receive subsidies from the state in case the tenant is not paying the full price of the rent. As always, the class state of the bourgeoisie has as its primary imperative to secure profits and reproduce that “relationship between men mediated by things” called capital.