Social housing as financialised real estate investment: investigating social housing leasing schemes in Ireland

This paper examines the deepening infiltration of the logics of finance and global capital into domestic housing policy, specifically in the sphere of social housing as a new global asset class. We explore the conflicting values and logics between the accumulation requirements of financial capital and the non-commercial, needs and rights, based logic of social housing. The emergence of state-led financialisation of social housing has called for attention as this newest frontier for the financialisation of housing. Grounded in critical political economy and institutional logics, we identify the intersecting market and state rationales underpinning the process of the financialisation of social housing in Ireland. We find that financialised leasing erodes tenant security, precaritises social housing into a temporary welfare mechanism, and shifts the state’s role from provider to commercial facilitator. In addition, we trace the full policy lifecycle, demonstrating how an initial adoption of long-term leasing as an austerity off-balance-sheet mechanism gave way to an official policy pivot to phase out the scheme, driven by state value-for-money evaluations and public resistance, even as municipal capacity deficits create ongoing path dependency.The paper argues for de-financialisation to restore the human right to secure, affordable housing, emphasising direct state involvement over reliance on private capital to support sustainable social housing provision.