# Madden and Marcuse's In Defense of Housing explained: housing as home, power and commodity

> In Defense of Housing (Verso, 2016) by the sociologist David Madden and the planner Peter Marcuse argues that housing has been turned into a commodity, that this makes insecurity the normal condition for poor and working-class residents, and that housing policy mostly serves markets and social order. Their remedy is a radical right to housing: secure tenancies, more social housing, rent regulation and democratic control. Radical centrism takes their test for every housing policy, which is whether it makes residents secure, and pairs it with building far more homes and with resident-run non-profit housing.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/madden-marcuse-in-defense-of-housing-explained
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-10-27
- Topic: Ideas & history
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- In Defense of Housing was published by Verso in 2016, with a new edition in 2024; Capitán Swing published the Spanish translation, En defensa de la vivienda, in 2018.
- Its five chapters cover commodification, residential alienation, oppression and liberation, the myths of housing policy and New York's housing movements, and it ends with a call for a radical right to housing.
- The authors argue that the housing crisis is the normal state of a commodified system for poor and working-class residents.
- They hold that secure housing of any tenure, owned or rented, answers residential alienation, and that promoting homeownership does not.
- Radical centrism keeps their test of security and adds what the book underplays: a large increase in supply.

*In Defense of Housing* is the book housing campaigners hand to anyone who thinks the crisis can be fixed with a tweak. David Madden, a sociologist at the London School of Economics who directs its Cities Programme, and Peter Marcuse, an urban planner who taught at Columbia University from 1975 to 2005, published it with Verso in 2016. A new edition followed in 2024. Capitán Swing brought out the Spanish translation, *En defensa de la vivienda*, in 2018. In week 3 of our programme on radical centrism it is the strongest counterpoint to the supply-side books we've read, and we already set it against Jerusalem Demsas in [an earlier piece](/en/articles/demsas-vs-madden-marcuse-housing-supply-or-power). Here we go through the book itself.

Marcuse had an unusual life for an academic. Born in Berlin in 1928, the son of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, he arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1933, spent about two decades as a lawyer for unions, non-profit housing corporations and civil-rights cases, and chaired Columbia's urban planning department in the late 1970s. He died in March 2022, aged 93. The book reads like the work of someone who had seen housing policy from the courtroom, the planning commission and the lecture hall.

## The argument, chapter by chapter

The introduction sets the frame: the residential is political. Madden and Marcuse build on Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value, which here means a home to live in against real estate to trade. Their whole book is about what happens when the second swallows the first.

The first chapter traces commodification from the enclosure of common land to what they call hyper-commodification, where buildings, land, labour and property rights all become things to buy and sell, and finance moves in. Gerald Koessl's review in *People, Place and Policy* picks out one of their sharper historical points: the reforms that took housing partly out of the market, rent regulation and social housing, were often introduced to contain unrest, and the market came back in through quieter changes in state policy.

The second chapter names the experience. Residential alienation is what it feels like when your home is insecure, when you could lose it at the next renewal or the next sale. Madden and Marcuse tie that insecurity to class, and they draw a conclusion that matters a lot for Spain: secure housing of any tenure answers it. Owning is one route to security. A protected tenancy is another.

The third chapter, on oppression and liberation, is the most critical of homeownership. From Thatcher's property-owning democracy onwards, they argue, promoting ownership individualised housing and lined owners up behind rising prices. The chapter also covers how race and gender shape who gets housed and how, and recalls moments when housing was a vehicle of emancipation.

The fourth chapter attacks what they call the myth of the benevolent state: the belief that governments make housing policy out of concern for every citizen. Using New York's social housing as the case, they argue policy has mostly served private accumulation and social order. Luis Alberto Salinas Arreortua, of Mexico's UNAM,, reviewing the Spanish edition, notes their provocation that the very phrase "housing policy" is evidence of the myth. The fifth chapter tells the story of New York's tenant movements, from the organising of the 1930s and 1940s to the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riots and Occupy Wall Street.

The conclusion asks for a radical right to housing: rent controls, much more social housing, secure tenancies and democratic control over how housing is managed and decided. Salinas lists the principles in full: decommodify and definancialise housing, defend and improve public housing, put residents first, let thousands of different designs flourish, and democratise management and policy.

## What critics say

Koessl, broadly sympathetic, finds the book stretched across too many issues, and thinks it would gain from engaging other debates, such as the literature on homeownership and on asset-based welfare. Readers from the supply side add a bigger objection, which we made in our earlier piece: the book has little to say about how many homes get built, and in a growing city a shortage alone produces exactly the insecurity Madden and Marcuse describe.

## Spain and the book

Madden spoke to the Spanish press when the translation came out. In a 2019 interview with *The Objective* he said governments had worked with banks and financial firms to turn housing into a commodity without ever putting that choice to a public vote, and singled out Spain for the strength of its housing movements. His proposals there were concrete: stop privatising public housing, strengthen tenants' rights and public housing, give neighbourhood associations more power and put empty homes to use. He was dismissive of apps and micro-homes as fixes.

Spain is a good test of the book, with a small social rental stock and tenants who feel exactly the insecurity Madden and Marcuse describe; our [piece on social housing in Spain and Europe](/en/articles/spain-social-housing-europe-housing-europe-2025) has the figures.

## What radical centrism takes from it

We take their measure first. A housing policy should be judged by whether the people living in homes are secure in them, owners and tenants alike, and Madden and Marcuse are right that tenure-neutral security is the goal. That is a left idea, and a good one.

From the market-liberal side we add the thing their book leaves out: supply, lots of it, from many builders. Security is easier to give when tenants can find another flat and landlords compete for them. A city that adds homes faster than households gives renters bargaining power no statute can.

And from neither side, we take one of their own principles further than they do: put residents in charge. Cooperatives, limited-profit associations and non-profit landlords where tenants sit on the board are decommodified in the sense the book wants and run by the people who live there, which answers the myth of the benevolent state without waiting for a better state. Our position joins the three. Build a great deal, give every tenancy predictable security, and grow a resident-governed non-profit sector alongside the market, as Austria does with its limited-profit associations. Madden and Marcuse would call that too modest. It is also a programme Spain could start next year.

## FAQ

### What is In Defense of Housing about?

It is a 2016 book by David Madden and Peter Marcuse arguing that housing has been turned into a commodity and a financial asset, that this produces permanent insecurity for poorer residents, and that the answer is a radical right to housing built on decommodification and democratic control.

### What is residential alienation?

Madden and Marcuse's term for experiencing your home as insecure and out of your control, somewhere you could lose at any time. They link it to class position and say secure housing of any tenure is the cure.

### What is the myth of the benevolent state in housing?

The belief that governments make housing policy mainly out of concern for every citizen's welfare. Madden and Marcuse argue that housing policy has mostly served private accumulation and social order, using New York's social housing as their case.

### Is there a Spanish edition of In Defense of Housing?

Yes. Capitán Swing published it in Madrid in 2018 as En defensa de la vivienda.

## Sources

- [In Defense of Housing](https://www.versobooks.com/products/191-in-defense-of-housing), Verso (2016)
- [Book review: In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis](https://ppp-online.org/view-all-volumes/book-review-in-defense-of-housing-the-politics-of-crisis/), People, Place and Policy (Gerald Koessl) (2017)
- [Reseña de En defensa de la vivienda (Madden y Marcuse)](https://www.redalyc.org/journal/312/31267410010/31267410010.pdf), Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos (Luis Alberto Salinas Arreortua) (2021)
- [In Memoriam: Peter Marcuse](https://www.arch.columbia.edu/in-memoriam-peter-marcuse), Columbia GSAPP (2022)
- [David Madden](https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/academic-staff/david-madden), London School of Economics (2026)
- [David Madden: en defensa de la vivienda](https://theobjective.com/further/economia/2019-02-07/david-madden-defensa-de-la-vivienda/), The Objective (2019)