While attention has been paid to how politico-legal reforms have enabled or inhibited the entrance of institutional investors, less is known about how these providers impact or challenge existing actors, regulations, processes, and institutional arrangements within local housing systems. This article departs from the case of Sweden: it has been discussed how institutional investors have been enabled by the country’s soft rent regulation, which is based on a collective bargaining process between all providers and the Swedish Union of Tenants (SUT) and allows for sharp rent increases after renovation. We show how in the Swedish case large institutional investors exploit existing institutional arrangements and challenge the norms that underlie the functioning of the rental housing system. To explore and illustrate this process we rely on the theory of incremental institutional change and complement it through the conceptual metaphor of “gaming.” We argue that housing systems can be understood as playing fields in which different actors employ tactics to defend or advance their interests, without, necessarily, the need to formally change the rules of the game. We suggest that more attention should be paid to institutional investors’ active engagement with local housing systems over time, beyond dichotomies of enablement or inhibition.

Smart housing and its consequences for tenants is still a largely absent field in smart city and housing research. Departing from the EU-funded project GrowSmarter, 2015-2019 and a renovation project of a 1960s housing complex in Stockholm, the article investigates tensions around retrofitting older apartment blocks to make them climate smart. The article presents the argument that top-down approaches of EU-funded climate-smart city interventions leave minimal space for different stakeholders to steer the process and limits the tenants' role and influence. Researching the implementation of smart technology in housing renovations and how it ultimately effects tenants' everyday lives, the article adds to previous knowledge of uneven development of climate smart solutions through bringing in the outcomes of housing renovation projects, and how 'actual smart cities' are played out within the housing sector. The article brings together research on climate urbanism, housing studies and smart cities with the purpose to understand the scalar politics of smart implementations and the effects on tenants.

In this chapter, the authors discuss the historical development and the current state of the housing and welfare regimes in the Nordic countries, using Sweden and Norway as our main cases. The two neighbouring countries on the Scandinavian peninsula are often classified as generous social democratic welfare regimes with a high level of universalism and de-commodification. In the first postwar decades, however, Sweden and Norway chose different paths in the sphere of housing policy. In Sweden, there are four main forms of tenure. Ownership rights (owner-occupied housing) are mainly enjoyed in single-family houses. The Norwegian housing regime is a liberal and selective sector of what is still a generous welfare regime with many universal benefits and services. Sweden and Norway both experienced a gradual “system shift” in housing policy in the 1980s, 1990s and after the millennium. 

How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housingresearchers’ understanding of the rental crisis and of the systems thatunderpin this crisis? By presenting papers from Sweden, Spain,Greece, the UK, and Australia this special issue contributes withknowledge on how housing struggles can inform new theoreticaland methodological approaches within the field of housing studies.In turn, the SI presents three tenets that together form a frameworkfor housing scholars: institutionalization as politics, tenants as poli-tical actors, and learning housing justice. We argue that it is crucialfor housing scholars to recenter on struggles for housing justice intheir readings of contemporary housing systems.

Sweden has seen a rise in homelessness alongside its strained housing market. References are increasingly being made to structural problems with housing provision, rather than individual issues. Housing has been organized through the local social services, which are responsible for supporting homeless people. With a foundation in housing studies, this article analyzes the Swedish social services’ challenges and actions in a time in which affordable housing is in shortage, and housing inequality a reality, through the lens of social services. The focus is on the intersection between the regular housing market and housing provision (primary welfare system), the social services needs‐tested support (secondary welfare system), and the non‐profit and for‐profit organizations (tertiary welfare system), with emphasis on the first two. The article is based on interviews with people working for the City of Malmö and illustrates how the housing shortage problem is moved around within the welfare system whilst also showing that social services’ support for homeless individuals appears insufficient. Social services act as a “first line” gatekeeper for those who have been excluded from the regular housing market. Moreover, recently implemented restrictions aim to make sure that the social services do not act as a “housing agency,” resulting in further exclusion from the housing market. The article highlights how the policies of the two welfare systems interact with and counteract each other and finally illustrates how homeless individuals fall between them. It highlights the need to link housing and homelessness in both research and practice to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of housing markets and how homelessness is sustained.

Precarious housing research has become increasingly relevant to previous welfare housing contexts, such as Sweden. In the 1990s, Swedish housing became gradually market-oriented, which induced a shortage of affordable rental housing and increased housing costs in all major cities. This article presents the results from interviews with individuals about their experiences of the unequal housing market in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The article furthers knowledge of the lived experience of housing precariousness in the Global North. The narratives from the housing precariat are analysed through the lens of housing inequalities, and the analysis theoretically adds to ‘research on critical geography of precarity. The article aims to illustrate the consequences of the shift from a general welfare approach of housing to an individualized and neoliberal housing market. In particular, this article adds insights on the gendered and racialized aspects that affect housing precariousness.