Financialization of Housing in Latin America: State Restructuring, Urban Inequality, and the Prospects for Socio-Spatial Justice

Housing financialization has become one of the most profound structural transformations of contemporary capitalism, subordinating housing to the logic of financial capital and turning it into an instrument of social control. This study critically examines housing financialization as a regime of accumulation, power, and governance that reshapes state action and urban management in Latin America, while proposing decommodification strategies aimed at socio-spatial justice. The findings reveal that housing functions as the central axis of an accumulation-by-dispossession model based on debt, property, and uneven territorialization, sustained by a state that acts as mediator of rentier capital. Nevertheless, alternative practices such as cooperativism and public credit emerge as expressions of collective and solidarity-based management. The study concludes that transitioning toward a fair political economy of space requires restoring the social function of housing, strengthening progressive fiscal frameworks, and democratizing territorial governance.