The housing squeeze: The politics of shrinking domestic space in the U.S. and beyond

On May 8/9th 2025, Phil Hubbard - PI for the ESRC project No Space Like Home - attended a workshop at LSE on the global push towards smaller homes. Questioning ideas that tiny homes are more ecological, affordable and liveable than larger ones, the conference delegates presented papers on small and shrinking homes in the UK, India, Canada and Hong Kong, identifying common trends amongst different cultural expectations. The delegates also collaborated in a zine making work shops designed to explore housing trends and argue for the decommodification of housing, and the resulting zine (below) Thanks especially to Jessie Ware and David Madden at LSE for facilitating this great workshop event.

The Housing Squeeze: published in Issue 7.1  of the Radical Housing Review:

https://radicalhousingjournal.org/2025/introducing-the-housing-squeeze-zine/

Keywords: Housing, domesticity, tiny housing, zines, arts-based research

Abstract:

In cities across the globe, housing is being squeezed as families and individuals are relegated to increasingly smaller domestic spaces. The housing squeeze is far from new, but a variety of shrinking pressures have deepened in the wake of the 2008 global financial crash. In May 2025 a group of fifteen scholars researching shrinking domesticity in diverse contexts—from street shelters in India to micro-apartments in Hong Kong—came together to produce a zine called The Housing Squeeze. Merging data, interviews, maps, collage, and multilingual reflections, this zine proposes radical housing futures inspired by decolonial, grassroots, and transnational insights. This creative academic collaboration contributes to the broader genre of radical housing zines, which has roots in underrepresented communities and countercultural movements.