Radical Housing: Cities and the global fight against housing precarity

Project Information

RadicalHOUSING

Grant agreement ID: 851940

DOI

10.3030/851940

Project closed

EC signature date 22 January 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 791,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 791,00

Coordinated by

POLITECNICO DI TORINO
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - RadicalHOUSING (Radical Housing: Cities and the global fight against housing precarity)

Reporting period: 2024-04-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Millions of people are forcibly evicted from their homes every year, and 1.6 billion have inadequate housing. In response to the increasing dwelling injustice worldwide, grassroots struggles for housing justice are becoming more and more common. However, little is understood about the extended significance and impact of these struggles globally. How is the global fight for inhabitation reshaping our cities across geographies? The EU-funded RadicalHOUSING project aims to fill this gap in knowledge, which is of critical importance to understand how, through the fight for housing justice, communities around the world are reshaping and re-imagining urbanity and habitation.

In specific, the project main aim was to explore how housing and inhabitation struggles intersect with—and co-constitute—broader struggles against class, race, and gender injustice globally. Central to this aim was implementing a housing justice research approach based on three tenets: a decolonial and intersectional take on theory, ethnography oriented at situated engagement, and a committed approach to knowledge exchange.

The project Team members included: Dr Chiara Cacciotti, Dr Rodrigo Castriota, Dr Mara Ferreri; Dr Daniela Morpurgo; Dr Oluwafemi Olajide; Dr Veda Popovici, Dr Rayna Rusenko; Dr Ana Vilenica; and Dr Devra Waldman.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

This Radical Housing Team achieved all of the five project objectives and produced substantive scholarly and practical outputs. In relation to each objective, this is a summary of the main results:

1. Intersectional history: Researchers carried out a foundational, intersectional analysis of the historical lineages of housing injustice (focusing on class, gender, race and coloniality). Although this objective had no standalone deliverable, its findings underpinned all other work and inform our forthcoming edited volume Housing Justice. Situating Structures, Struggles and Politics (Manchester University Press).

2. Structures and politics of activist networks: Work by Ana Vilenica, Rayna Rusenko, Veda Popovici and Oluwafemi Olajide engaged with organising forms and politics across regions. Vilenica analysed tenants’ organising and internationalism across the Americas (Antipode; Radical Housing Journal conversations); Rusenko produced influential work on the coloniality of home/homelessness in Asia (Antipode; edited book on Malaysia); Popovici analysed European networks (outputs feeding collective research); Olajide’s Lagos work was curtailed by career changes but was important in informing team reflection.

3. Radical inhabitation practices: City-level ethnographies and case studies were completed by Rodrigo Castriota (popular economies and housing in Belo Horizonte, IJURR), Daniela Morpurgo (housing and sex work in three Italian cities, EPD, IJURR), Daniela Cacciotti (afterlife of eviction in Rome, IJURR), Devra Waldman (planning and housing in Delhi’s urban extension, PiHG), Mara Ferreri (decommodification of housing and grassroots housing action in Barcelona, EPD) and myself (homelessness policy and working-class housing struggles in Naples). Despite COVID-19 and border-instability limiting some international cases, these studies produced monographs, IJURR and other journal articles, policy-facing interventions and—in Ferreri’s case—contributed to a successful ERC Consolidator application.

4. Trans‑local knowledge exchange: The Beyond Inhabitation Lab and a programme of summer schools (Turin, Lisbon), workshops (Paris, Sheffield), seminars and conference panels established strong global exchange between scholars and a wider community of interest. See next section for details.

5. A new theoretical agenda: The project advanced conceptual thinking on ‘home’, ‘homelessness’ and housing through single‑author publications by team members, the edited collection, and my solo monograph For a Liberatory Politics of Home and a forthcoming co‑authored monograph with AbdouMaliq Simone, Beyond Inhabitation. Housing and Desire at the Edge (both with Duke University Press). These works set out interdisciplinary conceptual grammars for radical dwelling and housing justice.

Overall, the project delivered substantial empirical, theoretical and public‑facing outputs, strengthened international networks, and positioned new research agendas that link scholarship with activist and policy engagement.

A list of all published works is available at: https://www.michelelancione.eu/blog/2025/10/20/results-of-the-erc-inhabiting-radical-housing-2020-2025/ or at https://beyondinhabitation.org/publications/

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Additional Project Outcomes

The project delivered substantial results in five key areas beyond initial objectives:

Beyond Inhabitation Lab
Co-founded with AbdouMaliq Simone, the Lab facilitated international connections and knowledge exchange for the research team. While established through ERC funding, it will continue independently, providing an enduring legacy for radical housing scholarship (beyondinhabitation.org).

Academic Exchange
The Lab organized numerous international events including two summer programs (Turin/Lisbon with keynotes by Gilmore, Thieme, Osbourne, De Boeck, Simone), workshops in Paris and Sheffield, and 25 distinguished lectures. Most seminars are freely available on YouTube.

Grassroots Praxis
Researchers pursued politically-oriented work including direct action and housing justice organizing. This generated significant knowledge production: Vilenica's conversations with movements (Radical Housing Journal), Cacciotti's work on Roman squatting, Ferreri's analysis of housing regime transformations, Popovici on European movements, Morpurgo on sex-worker activism, and Lancione's forthcoming popular history of Naples housing struggles.

Policy Impact
Lancione established a formal partnership between Naples Municipality and Turin Polytechnic, contributing to an innovative housing-led homelessness policy. Starting fall 2025, this provides 13 group apartments with personalized emancipatory plans, including dedicated housing for people in gender transition. Lancione provided documentation feedback, participated in meetings, and trained social workers on harm reduction and non-medicalization principles.

Grant Successes
Supporting researchers' funding pursuits yielded exceptional results: Lancione's Italian Ministry project on Eastern European housing (€250,000); successful Marie Curie Fellowships for Giudici (€280,000) and García-Lamarca (€188,000); Zahan's Urban Studies Foundation Fellowship (£150,000); and Ferreri's ERC Consolidator Grant (€2 million). These successes consolidate the project's legacy through continued work at the Beyond Inhabitation Lab.

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