The Routledge Handbook of Precarious Housing

Introduction

Precarity by design: Global perspectives on precarious housing (Abigail Friendly and Ana Paula Pimentel Walker)

Section 1: Key issues of precarious housing amidst rights, informality and justice

1.     Causes of precariousness in housing (Alan Gilbert)

2.     The making and unmaking of housing and urban precarity (Lorena Zarate)

3.     Housing precarity and the financialization of renting (Richard Waldron and Gertjan Wijburg)

4.     Housing, Climate Change and Informal Settlements: Pathways for Adaptation, Mitigation and Climate Justice (Jorgelina Hardoy and Daniel Kozak, with the collaboration of Florencia Almansi)

5.     Precarious housing in the unequal city through the lens of Johannesburg and the Stjwetla ‘informal’ settlement (Marie Huchzermeyer)

6.     Informality as governance technology: Precarious housing and the politics of differentiated citizenship (Roberto Rocco)

7.     How four housing policy instruments affect housing precarity (Marietta Haffner, Rachel Ong ViforJ and Wendy M. Stone)

8.     Housing justice: Towards an actionable agenda to tackle housing precarity (Paula Sevilla-Núñez, Camila Cociña and Alexandre Apsan Frediani)

Section 2: Tenure security

9.     Evictions and precarious housing (Martine August and Julie Mah)

10.  Subprime masculinities: Gendering homeownership, mortgage debt and default in 21^st century Spain (Sophie Gonick)

11.  Fragility of homeownership: State-led urban redevelopment and housing precarity (Anna Zhelnina)

12.  Caretaking as tenure: Maintenance as a strategy for precarious inhabitation (Maya Borean, Joma Ronden and Lauren Wagner)

13.  Flexible planning and the institutionalization of housing precarity: Temporary housing in the Netherlands and Switzerland (Daan Bossuyt and Gabriela Debrunner)

Section 3: Homelessness and health

14.  At the far end of precarity: Homelessness in the US and responses from the San Diego region (Mirele Rabinowitz-Busell and Leslie Lewis)

15.  Precarious initial reception and refugee shelter insecurity in Toronto (Jana Walkowski)

16.  Beyond treatment: The failing politics of care and housing precarity among PALOP patients in Portugal (Joana Pestana Lages)

17.  Precarious housing and the risk of Chagas disease transmission in rural areas in a Colombian municipality (Amanda Patricia Amorocho Perez)

Section 4: Infrastructure provision

18.  Housing and infrastructure precarity (Andrea Protschky and Julian Formella)

19.  Precarity at the housing-water nexus (Lucy Everitt and Katie Meehan)

20.  Urban mobility and housing: The role of mobility on urban precariousness (Erik Vergel Tovar and Adriana Hurtado)

21.  Energy and transport poverty as drivers of housing precarity: A multidimensional analysis (Stefan Bouzarovski, Giulio Mattioli, Paul McKenzie, Amish Sarpotdar, Harry Radzuan, and Mari Martiskainen)

22.  The intersections between water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) and housing access in urban slums in Pune, India (Ranna Abdulhadi, Ajay Bailey and Femke van Noorloos)

23.  Between precarious housing and data precariousness: How Rio de Janeiro’s favelas organized themselves to survive the Covid-19 pandemic (Palloma Menezes, Gustavo Azevedo, Kharine Gil, Thaís Cruz)

24.  The infrastructural life of rental housing: Landlord mediation and the production of precarity (Shaun Smith)

Section 5: Climate change

25.  Intersectionality of climate risk, precarious housing and social (in)justice in Indonesia (Wika Maulany Fatimah and Anindrya Nastiti)

26.  Invisible climate warriors: Women and LGBTQIA+ experiences against climate displacement in favelas and land occupations (Maria Arquero de Alarcón, Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, Mieko Yoshihama, Hanae Samoa, Odessa Gonzalez Benson)

27.  Reclaiming space, rights and resources: Climate adaptation in Curitiba’s precarious housing between global agendas and local realities (Maria Carolina Maziviero and Nathana Louise Czornei)

28.  Heat, Housing, and Harm: The Structural Violence of Indoor Thermal Precarity in Colombia (Ana Paula Pimentel Walker and Eunsoo Hyun)

29.  Rethinking post-disaster recovery through Sen’s Capability Approach: Housing Reconstruction after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (Apil KC)

Section 6: Predatory actors and practices

30.  Precarious housing and Crime (Frank Mueller)

31.  Housing volatility in the making of the new capital city in Indonesia (Kei Otsuki and Bosman Batubara)

32.  Housing microfinance in precarious urban communities: Narratives, actors and contradictions (Tatiana Boisa Garcia and Lucia Shimbo)

33.  Gentrification and gentefication in post-disaster Puerto Rico: Stories of resilience and struggle (Ivis García and Clara Irazábal)

Section 7: Social movements and collective action

34.  From precarious housing squatters to city makers: The Movimento per Il Diritto AllÁbitare in Rome (Margherita Grazioli)

35.  Housing precarization and the struggles of tenants: Building solidarities in times of crises (Dominika V. Polanska)

36.  Peripheral struggles for housing in Chile: The Pobladores Movement (Miguel Pérez)

37.  Beyond evictions: Analysing tactics and strategies of international anti-eviction movements (Juliana Sassi, Fiadh Tubridy and Anuska Dasgupta)

Section 8: Equity, justice, and inclusion

38.  Imposed impermanence: Housing precarity, property, and racial capitalism (Patricia Basile)

39.  Racial discrimination and housing precarity in U.S. peri-urban areas: The case of a North Texas unincorporated subdivision (Josh Newton and Ariadna Reyes-Sánchez)

40.  Precarious housing expanded: Materiality, bureaucracy, and climate in remote Australia  (Liam Grealy and Tess Lea)

41.  Housing precariousness in Sweden: Highlighting the experiences of women with temporary  housing solutions (Lenita Kefala and Carina Listerborn)

42.  Un/earthing phantom homes: LGBTQ+ student-imaginaries transforming othered home-worlds into being (Chan Arun-Pina)

43.  Students and housing precarity (Nick Revington, Julia Frotey and Rosalie Laliberté)

44.  Urban village and migrant housing in Shenzhen, China (Caixia Liu, Xin Li, Shuyi Feng and Yanliu Lin)

45.  Growing housing precarity amongst older people in homeowner nations (Piret Veeroja, Wendy Stone and Emma Power)

Section 9: Solutions to precarious housing

46.  A remedy to housing precarity? The potential and limitations of social housing (Paavo Monkkonen)

47.  When owning a home is not enough: The promises and pitfalls of subsidized homeownership in Chile (Diego Gil)

48.  Precarious improvements: Lessons from state-sponsored slum upgrading in Southeast Asia (Hayden Shelby)

49.  Brazilian favelas: Background and policy challenges (Rosana Denaldi and Jeroen Klink)

50.  Addressing housing needs for low income households in Africa: Lessons from experience (Guillermo Delgado, Kate Lines, Katrina Phiri, Diana Mitlin and Patrick Njoroge)

51.  From precarity to permanence: Housing rights, resistance and renewal through the Caño Martín Peña community land trust in Puerto Rico (María E. Hernández Torrales and Line Algoed)

52.  Collaborative housing as a strategy to address housing precarity and restore housing as a fundamental human right (Valesca Lima)

Conclusion

Precarious housing: Towards a shared conceptual grammar (Ana Paula Pimentel Walker and Abigail Friendly)

Biography

Abigail Friendly is Assistant Professor in Spatial Planning at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She explores intersections between planning and governance, and the potential of planning tools and community participation to address spatial inequality in cities. Her recent research investigates precarious forms of housing experienced by marginalized residents. Friendly is an international expert on the Brazilian experience in applying the right to the city. Her recent book is titled Claiming the Right to the City: Rethinking Urban Transformations in Brazil. She holds degrees in urban planning and political science.

Ana Paula Pimentel Walker is an Urban Planning Associate Professor at The University of Michigan. She investigates how communities engage with urban governance and evaluates the significance of participatory institutions in planning healthy, environmentally just cities. Her action research identifies overlapping oppressions that restrict marginalized communities’ participation in local governance and elevates the voices of migrants and precariously housed residents through organizing, popular education, and access to justice. Pimentel Walker is the recipient of the 2025 Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award from the Urban Affairs Association. She holds degrees in law, urban planning, Latin American studies, and anthropology.

"Friendly and Pimentel Walker have assembled an outstanding collection of critical interventions on key dimensions of precarious housing, from climate change to health. This handbook will be essential reading for activists, scholars, and policymakers seeking to understand one of the most complex and pressing social issues in contemporary capitalism."

-- Susanne Soederberg, author of Urban Displacements and Canada Research Chair in Just and Inclusive Cities at Queen’s University, Canada.

"This carefully crafted volume offers a timely and profound examination of housing precarity across a myriad of global contexts. The book goes beyond simply identifying problems; it also provides forward-looking insights and strategies for achieving housing justice, making it essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. By bridging disciplines and geographies, Friendly and Pimentel Walker establish a compelling and much-needed framework for understanding and addressing one of the most pressing urban challenges of our time."

-- Deden Rukmana, Professor and Director, Master of City and Regional Planning Program, Department of Public Affairs and Planning, University of Texas at Arlington.

"The housing crisis is increasingly at the centre of city, national, and global policy discussions. This impressive collection extends the conversation to look beyond just “shortages” to the broader experience of precariousness, while also deepening the analysis of how this is produced in a wide range of settings. It is an invaluable resource to all who seek to understand the multiple dimensions of shelter and who seek opportunities to enable transformative change."

-- David Dodman, General Director, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS).

"This Handbook offers a must-read contribution to housing justice and its literature by providing both conceptual clarity and a plurality of global perspectives on precarious housing. Its diverse contributors show the persistence and challenges of precarious housing but also its remarkable political potential as a site of agency."

-- Vinit Mukhija, Professor, Department of Urban Planning, Founding Director, Master of Real Estate Development (MRED) Program, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. 

"The authors and editors of the Handbook of Precarious Housing show the global housing crisis to be anything but a temporary blip of market failure.  They demonstrate that housing precarity is endemic across nations and time and requires fundamental rethinking of how housing is produced and allocated.  The promising examples of innovative housing solutions given from many countries explore possibilities that need to be discussed broadly."

-- Bruce Stiftel, FAICP, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Bringing together global perspectives across disciplines and regions, the Handbook of Precarious Housing reconceptualizes housing insecurity as not an exception but a structural feature of contemporary urbanization. From tenure insecurity and homelessness to financialization, coloniality, austerity, climate vulnerability, and intersecting inequalities, the volume develops a powerful and shared conceptual grammar for understanding how precarious housing is produced (and contested) across the Global North and South. By foregrounding both structural forces and everyday practices of dwelling, resistance, and care, the handbook positions precarious housing as a central lens for interpreting urban inequality and imagining more just housing futures. This handbook offers an essential reference for scholars, planners, policymakers, and advocates seeking to understand--and transform—the political economy of housing insecurity today."

-- Karen Chapple, Director of the School of Cities and Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto.